Research underlying family-focused prevention programs has been conducted primarily with European American families (Amato & Fowler, 2002). To what extent do models established with European American families generalize to other racial/ethnic groups? From a methodological perspective, measurement equivalence, the degree to which a measure reflects the same construct across racial/ethnic groups, must be established before investigating whether there are group differences in the mean level of a construct, or whether there are group differences in the relationship between the construct and a hypothesized outcome (Raykov, 2004; Whiteside-Mansell, Bradley, Little, Corwyn, & Spiker, 2001). Without examining measurement equivalence across racial/ethnic groups, conclusions regarding similarities and differences in parenting and its relationship to child adjustment may be based on invalid measures (Harachi, Choi, Abbott, Catalano, & Bliesner, 2006; Whiteside-Mansell, Bradley, Little, Corwyn, & Spiker, 2001).
