IMPACT AND DETECTION OF RESPONSE DISTORTIONS ON PARENTING MEASURES USED TO ASSESS RISK FOR CHILD PHYSICAL ABUSE

This study investigates the impact of instructional conditions (fake g ood, be honest, fake bad, and respond randomly) on the scores of 3 par enting measures: the Adult/Adolescent Parenting Inventory (AAPI; Bavol ek, 1984), the Child Abuse Potential (CAP) Inventory (Milner, 1986), a nd the Parenting Stress Index (PSI; Abidin, 1995) in general-populatio n parents and at-risk parents. In addition, the study explores the abi lity of the PSI Defensiveness Scale and the CAP Inventory validity ind exes to detect response distortions. As expected, most parenting-measu re scores changed significantly as a result of parents' attempts to di stort their responses. Across the response-distortion conditions, the PSI Defensiveness Scale only detected protocols in the fake-good condi tion with detection rates below 50%, whereas the CAP Inventory validit y indexes correctly detected as invalid 94.7% and 91.1% of the protoco ls generated by general-population parents and at-risk parents, respec tively. With regard to correct detection and labeling rates, except fo r the labeling of faking-bad behavior in the at-risk group (57.9% corr ect), the labeling rates of the CAP validity indexes for each of the r esponse-distortion conditions in the general population and at-risk gr oups were acceptable, ranging from 82.4% to 100% correct.