MEASURING WORKER COGNITIONS ABOUT PARENTS OF CHILDREN WITH MENTAL ANDEMOTIONAL DISABILITIES

The development of an instrument for assessing workers' beliefs about parents of children receiving mental health-related services is presen ted. The instrument contributes to the study of patent-provider collab oration, an area that has received increasing attention in the field o f child mental health. Test-retest reliability and confirmatory factor analysis are reported. Five factors emerged: parent blame, giving inf ormation, parent validation, use of psychotropic medications, and inst ructing parents how to help their children. Multiple regression of eac h factor on demographic variables and on respondents' preferred theore tical orientations showed differences in beliefs about parents among w orkers who endorsed psychodynamic, family systems, cognitive-behaviora l, neuropsychological, or existential-humanistic models.