The test is designed to assess parental competences conceived as parents' dispositions which allow them to cope with children in the ways conducive the latters' development in terms of autonomy, self-regulatory skills and the sense of effectiveness. It can be used to examine both actual and potential parents.
The tool consists of 30 tasks in the form of short stories presenting various parent-child situations. Most of them are problematic involving the child's troubles, his/her improper behaviour or demands which are impossible to satisfy but some present positive events, for example the child's successes. The stories feature children of diverse ages and refer to diverse activities (learning, home chores, contacts with peers, entertainment). The parent behaviours involved are different in terms of actual control over the child, rigidity of the requirement system and emotional comittment.
To each situation three types of parental behaviour are ascribed and the respondent should assess the probability of his/her choosing a given behaviour, using the scale of 1 through 4 (from definitely no, through rather no and rather yes to definitely yes). Apart from the comptence scale the tool also includes four complementary scales which allow to measure the parent's inclinations to making mistakes, rigidity, permissiveness, overcaring and helplessness.
An electronic version of TKR in English is also available on the Epsilon platform. Details in the tab: Epsilon version.
Adoption
Candidates for adoptive parents usually go through a long recruitment procedure a part of which is the assessment of their dispositions to be good nurturers or educators. Dispositions are not only appropriate personality features but also certain competences shown when coping with a child.
In the assessment of candidates for adoptive and foster parents the parallel use of two methods, CUIDA and TKR, shoud be advised. Together they can provide a better and more comprehensive picture of parenthood dispositions. The CUIDA enables to assess those of personality features which are important from the point view of a proper child-care, whereas the TKR provides information about parental competences, that is parents' knowledge and their beliefs about their own skills connected to children upbringing. The CUIDA scores can also be useful when those on the TKR are interpreted, esp. when they refer to parental errors. For example a high score on the TKR Overcare scale in a person who has low skills in coping with a loss assessed on the CUIDA – this proves his/her emotional dependence on others – can be interpreted as a symptom of worrying about the child and an inclination to control the child in order to keep him/her safe.
Materials:
- Full package (manual, score sheets, test sheets)
- Manual, 2nd edition*
- Test sheets (25 copies)
- Score sheets (25 copies)
*The second edition of the manual (2023) includes an expanded section on interpreting scores, while the method itself (items, key) and norms have remained unchanged.
The TKR is designed to assess parental competences of adult persons and their personal tendencies to make four kinds of errors. The test-takers can be both actual parents and persons who do not have children.
The TKR can be useful when the psychologist's help is recommended because of educational problems the child causes at home or at school. One of the source of those problems can be his/her parents' incompetent behaviour. The TKR allows to verify the hipothesis that the mother's or father's level of competence is unsatisfactory and, moreover, it helps to define which negative tendencies surfacing in their behaviours when coping with the child are responsible for the child's problems.
The analysis of scores on the scales referring to parental errors can also be a good starting point for planning therapeutic intervention for parents. The TKR scores can also help those among parents who want to improve their competences to identify their strengths and weaknesses disclosing typical errors they are prone to.
TKR can also be used in examining childless persons – both future parents who want to develop their competences and candidates for foster or adoptive parents.
The TKR is used in legal matters concerning decisions on parental authority, in centers that qualify candidates for adoptive parents, in centers evaluating candidates for foster care roles, and in psychological-pedagogical counseling centers, when a possible cause of a child's problems might be a lack of certain competencies in parents.
The Ukrainian language version of the TKR can be useful in studies of war refugees who, upon arrival in Poland, need to regulate their legal status in order to be able to care for minors who are not their children.
Reliability
The most reliable among the TKR scores – both in terms of internal consistency and stability – are those on the Competences scale. The stability and internal consistency of scores on the Rigidity and Overcare scales are fully satisfactory. Only the homogeneity of the Helplessness scale may rise some doubts.
Validity
Analyses conducted brought evidence for the TKR validity.
Norms
The test has two sets of s-ten norms – one for the general population (based on scores of the sample of 700 respondents aged 20–59 and tested in a neutral situation), and the other for foster parents or candidates for adoptive and foster parents (based on scores of the sample of 350 respondents tested in diagnostic situations in adoption and family-aid centres).
The test is also available as an online examination on the Epsilon Platform and as an option for entering and calculating scores from the paper-and-pencil version on the Epsilon Platform.
An electronic version of TKR in English is also available on the Epsilon platform. The choice of the language version (Polish or English) is made at the time of ordering the examination (after prior purchase of TKR examination units or the client's wallet). The aim of creating an English-language version of TKR is to enable Polish psychologists to study people who are not fluent in Polish, but live in Poland. Therefore, in this specific situation, the test scores should be compared with the scores of Polish citizens (the score should be referred to Polish norms). The test report is intended for a Polish-speaking psychologist, so it will be generated in Polish.
Uprawnienia do zakupu i stosowania danego testu zależą od jego kategorii, wyznaczonej zgodnie z kategoryzacją Komisji do Spraw Testów Psychologicznych działającej z ramienia Polskiego Towarzystwa Psychologicznego.
TKR jest narzędziem kategorii B2.
B2 – testy dla psychologów; dla innych specjalistów po ukończonym ogólnym szkoleniu z psychometrii zakończonym egzaminem, a następnie szkolenia z zakresu konkretnego testu (lub grupy podobnych testów)
Wymagane kwalifikacje:
- Ukończone studia magisterskie z psychologii – wymagane przedłożenie kopii dyplomu
LUB
- Ukończone dowolne studia wyższe magisterskie – wymagane przedłożenie kopii dyplomu
- ORAZ posiadanie certyfikatu ukończenia szkolenia i zaliczenia egzaminu z psychometrii wg programu zaakceptowanego przez PTP
- ORAZ ukończone szkolenie z zakresu konkretnego testu (lub grupy podobnych testów) – wymagane przedłożenie certyfikatu ukończenia szkolenia
- ORAZ praca z ludźmi w obszarze zawodowym, który stanowi uzasadnienie dla wyboru i stosowania narzędzia.
