RELIABILITY OF RETROSPECTIVE REPORTS OF PERCEIVED MATERNAL ACCEPTANCE-REJECTION IN CHILDHOOD

Research reported here addresses the issue of the reliability of retro spective reports of children's perceptions of maternal acceptance-reje ction as measured by the Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire. A sample of 49 middle-class Caucasian 7- to 11-yr.-old children were a sked to respond to the questionnaire reflecting on their mothers' curr ent accepting-rejecting behaviors. Seven years later the same children -now adolescents-responded to the same questionnaire with the instruct ion to reflect back on their mothers' behavior when the youth were abo ut 7 to 11 years of age. None of these youth recalled haring been test ed seven years earlier. A simple zero-order correlation between scores in childhood and adolescence was .62, indicating that adolescents' re trospective recollections were in moderate agreement with their report s during childhood. Thus, it seems clear that, at least with respect t o perceptions of maternal acceptance-rejection as measured by the Pare ntal Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire, researchers can have reasonab le confidence that adolescents' current recollections about their expe riences of maternal acceptance-rejection are likely to be in moderate agreement with what they would have reported had they been tested duri ng childhood.