- POS-DEV is a retrospective scale assessing positive caregiver, close friend, and adult role model experiences across psychosocial predictability, opportunity, and safety.
- Across multiple samples, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the factor structure with excellent psychometric properties and six-month test-retest reliability.
- POS-DEV predicts adult mental health above and beyond adversity, capturing under-measured promotional aspects of the early psychosocial environment.
Assessment. 2026 Jul 5:10731911261459205. doi: 10.1177/10731911261459205. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
Both positive and adverse developmental experiences have significant impacts across the lifespan. Psychometric measurement of adversity serves multiple conceptual frameworks for parsing experiences; however, existing measurements of positive experiences largely serve count-based frameworks. We present the POS-DEV scale, a retrospective measure of positive experiences with caregivers, close friends, and adult role models across experience dimensions of psychosocial predictability, opportunity, and safety. Exploratory factor analyses (Study 1, n = 406; Study 2, n = 316) reduced items while a confirmatory factor analysis (Study 3, n = 289) confirmed a final factor structure for POS-DEV across childhood and adolescent windows with excellent psychometric properties and construct validity. Six-month test-retest reliability (Study 4, n = 203) was excellent for total scores. Positive experiences explained variation in adult mental health above and beyond adversity effects (Study 5, n = 1,021), highlighting the POS-DEV scale’s utility for capturing important but under-measured promotional aspects of the early psychosocial environment.
PMID:42402439 | DOI:10.1177/10731911261459205
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