Validation of the Parental Playfulness Questionnaire in a Russian sample: development of a unidimensional 8-item short form (PPQ-8) and its association with parental stress.

Introduction: Parental playfulness is increasingly recognized as a positive relational resource supporting child development and buffering parental stress. The Parental Playfulness Questionnaire (PPQ) is the only brief self-report instrument tailored to this construct; however, it has not undergone formal cross-cultural psychometric revalidation outside its original language and cultural context. Methods: The present study evaluated the Russian adaptation of the PPQ and its association with parental stress in a sample of 889 parents of children aged 2-7 years. Random split-half exploratory ( Results: The original five-factor structure did not replicate: four of five subscales showed unacceptable reliability. A systematic method effect emerged, associated with content-reversed items and likely amplified by the cultural endorsement of involved parenting as a normative imperative. After removing reverse-scored items and items lacking cultural equivalence, an 8-item unidimensional short form (PPQ-8) demonstrated good model fit (CFI = 0.976, RMSEA = 0.066, SRMR = 0.054) and acceptable internal consistency ( Discussion: Considerable deviations between the final solution and the original five-factor structure suggest that the PPQ-8 may function more as a revised instrument than a mere abbreviation. The PPQ-8 offers an efficient measure of active parental playfulness and represents an important step toward a more comprehensive, culturally informed understanding of parent-child relationships.