Development and validation of the parental authority questionnaire - Revised

Baumrind's conceptualization of parenting style has influenced research and theorizing about child-rearing for more than 30 years, yet few clinical applications of this work have been realized. The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of a parenting style measure, the Parental Authority Questionnaire - Revised (PAQ-R). This project furthered the development and validation of the instrument by examining the factor structure, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and convergent validity of the PAQ-R in a large, ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample. The factor structure and reliability of the PAQ-R was modest, but generally within the acceptable range. Specifically, the Authoritarian and Permissive subscales of the PAQ-R had modest reliability and convergent validity; these PAQ-R subscales correlated with relevant subscales of the Parenting Scale and the Parent-Child Relationship Inventory. By contrast, the Authoritativeness subscale had poorer psychometric properties when used in lower SES, primarily African American populations. While African American mothers in the sample reported being more Permissive than did Caucasian mothers, these differences disappeared after controlling for income and maternal education. By contrast, African American mothers continued to report more Authoritarian attitudes even after controlling for income and maternal education.