The development and validation of the Spanish adaptation of the Protective Factors Survey Aislinn Conrad-Hiebner a, ⁎, Alexander M. Schoemann b , Jacqueline M. Counts c , Karin Chang d a The University of Iowa School of Social Work, 20 West Davenport Street, North Hall, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA b East Carolina University, Department of Psychology, Rawl Building, East Fifth Street, Greenville, NC 27858, USA c University of Kansas Center for Public Partnerships & Research, 1617 St. Andrews Drive, Lawrence, KS 66047, USA d University of Kansas Center for Educational Opportunity Programs, 1122 W. Campus Road, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA abstract article info Article history: Received 5 August 2014 Received in revised form 4 March 2015 Accepted 4 March 2015 Available online 12 March 2015 Keywords: Protective factors Child maltreatment prevention Protective Factors Survey Latino families Instrument translation Psychometric properties Latinos comprise a rapidly growing segment of families seeking child maltreatment prevention services. Children of Latino families face an increased risk of maltreatment due to acculturation and immigration stressors. Current- ly the child maltreatment prevention field lacks a cadre of valid and reliable Spanish language tools to measure program outcomes and families' resources and needs at service entry. The Protective Factors Survey (PFS) is an evaluation tool used increasingly among child maltreatment prevention programs. The PFS is a measure of five family-level protective factors against child abuse and neglect: Family Functioning/Resiliency, Concrete Support, Social Support, Nurturing and Attachment, & Knowledge of Parenting/Child Development. In this study we test the validity, reliability and stability of a Spanish adaptation of the PFS (S-PFS) among seven agencies and 148 Latino participants across the nation. The results from this study indicate that the S-PFS is a valid, reliable and stable measure. Implications for the child maltreatment prevention field are discussed. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Children of Latino immigrants comprise a large and rapidly expanding ethnic group of children in the United States (U.S.). Currently Latinos, who include persons from Central America, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Mexico, and South America, represent 17% of the total U.S. population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2013). Given that Latinos represent a substantial population in the U.S., there are a growing number of Latino families being served by child abuse prevention agencies (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), (2013); Pew Hispanic Center, 2010). Latino immigrants face heightened risk of child maltreatment because of familial stressors associated with accul- turation and immigration (Dettlaff, Earner, & Phillips, 2009). Latino children are more likely to experience substantiated cases of maltreat- ment than White, non-Latino children (Church, Gross, & Baldwin, 2005). Language barriers further compound the unique service needs of Latino families involved in the child welfare system. In 2010, for example, nearly 75% of Latino households spoke a language other than English at home (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011). As with most government-funded and nonprofit agencies, child abuse prevention programs are required to measure program outcomes. Within the child abuse prevention field, there are few validated instru- ments in Spanish to measure participants' needs, resources, and prog- ress. The lack of available tools raises concerns related to the cultural, functional, metric, and linguistic equivalence of existing translations of surveys, which ultimately leads to methodological bias (Peña, 2007). These concerns are especially relevant because most instruments that assess wellbeing are standardized with English-speaking populations and not with other language groups. The present study addresses this problem by examining a Spanish adaptation of the Protective Factors Survey (PFS), a tool commonly used by child abuse prevention programs in more than 40 states. Although other tools measure aspects of family-level protective factors (e.g., Parents' Assessment of Protective Factors), the PFS is the only peer-reviewed tool that demonstrates reliability and multiple forms of validity across six field tests (Counts, Buffington, Chang-Rios, Rasmussen, & Preacher, 2010; FRIENDS National Resource Center for Community Based Child Abuse Prevention, 2013). The purposes of this study are to determine 1) whether the S-PFS is invariant; 2) whether the S-PFS is stable across time, that is, the extent to which values at Time One predict values at Time Two; and 3) whether the S-PFS is a valid and reliable measure among Spanish-speaking families. Here, validity represents the degree to which mounting evidence and theory Children and Youth Services Review 52 (2015) 45–53 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 316 215 2264. E-mail address: aislinn.conrad@ku.edu (A. Conrad-Hiebner). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2015.03.006 0190-7409/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. 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