ABSTRACT
Alarming child abuse statistics highlight that parent-child aggression (PCA) remains widespread in this country,
adversely impacting the short-term and long-term emotional and physical welfare of children and incurring
substantial costs to society. To avoid such detrimental outcomes, efforts to avert physical child abuse must
identify and tackle the key factors that culminate in PCA. Although research has implicated a number of
potential risk factors for PCA, major obstacles impede our progress. Heavy reliance on self-report
questionnaires to measure constructs related to PCA can be biased, which confound our ability to conclusively
identify the potential mechanisms that exacerbate risk for PCA. Most researchers also typically question
parents about potential PCA risk factors while not in the act of parenting, asking them to summarize their
experiences and beliefs about parenting, which may not accurately reflect actual parenting behavior or
cognitions. To determine if a factor contributes to PCA and actual parenting behavior, we must be confident in
how the factor was measured. Risk factors should also be theoretically grounded although often such factors
are studied in isolation or inadequately integrated into a cohesive model. Thus, the current project will explore
the feasibility of conducting an innovative, multi-method assessment of PCA risk in a group of 100 mothers
who have substantiated cases of physical child abuse. Factors investigated in this assessment will reflect
components of Social Information Processing (SIP) theory, a theoretical model that focuses on cognitive
processes parents may experience that increase their abuse risk, although the model has not yet been
comprehensively applied to abusive parents. In recent efforts to refine the SIP model, a more inclusive
theoretical model will be considered in this study, with emotion, personal vulnerabilities, and resiliencies
integrated with the SIP sociocognitive processes. This study will evaluate a selection of analog tasks—indirect
assessment methods that utilize behavioral simulations or implicit means to assess a construct—with mothers
substantiated for physical abuse. Analog tasks will be compared to traditional self-report approaches as well as
more proximal parenting behavior and cognitions assessed via experience sampling methods (ESM). We
capitalize on technological advances by using ESM with smartphones to assess daily parenting across four
weeks. Findings will be relevant for both research and clinical purposes. Improved detection of particular
elements of the theoretical model offer potential targets for prevention and intervention programs. Moreover,
results from this project will provide initial insights into the feasibility of alternative methodologies to assess
critical constructs related to PCA risk. With this initial project, subsequent research can then contrast
substantiated perpetrators with comparison groups of varying risk status to determine the discriminant validity
of analog tasks and later, whether such tools could ultimately be adapted to create computerized intervention
and prevention strategies.