Psychological Tests for Parental Alienation
On December 5 & 6, the International Council on Shared Parenting (ICSP), with support from National Parents Organization, is presenting an extraordinary conference, freely available to anyone on the Internet. The conference brings together leading researchers from around the world to address a variety of issues connected with shared parenting, but with a special focus on shared parenting and domestic violence.
The organizers were fortunate to be able to include in the conference Dr. William Bernet, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Dr. Bernet has done groundbreaking research on parental alienation. His presentation, “A Counterintuitive Feature of Family Violence and Parental Alienation,” will be presented at 1:30 pm EDT on Sunday, December 6. Below, Dr. Bernet presents the various tests related to parental alienation that will be discussed in his presentation.
Psychological Tests for Parental Alienation
William Bernet, M.D.
In recent years, researchers have published peer-reviewed articles regarding several psychological tests that relate in some way to the identification of parental alienation (PA). Some of the tests or questionnaires involve parents; some are administered to children who are being evaluated for the possibility of PA. Here is a list of tests that relate to PA—in roughly chronological order.
Some these tests will be discussed in my presentation on December 6, 2020, at the conference of the International Council on Shared Parenting. If you are a graduate student and/or interested in PA research, you can help develop bibliographies regarding PA; contact me at william.bernet@vumc.org.
Bricklin Perceptual Scales. The BPS, which were developed specifically for use in child custody evaluations, define and quantify children’s attachment to and perceptions of their parents (Bricklin, 1984). Estranged children are likely on the BPS to manifest ambivalence toward both parents. Alienated children, on the other hand, are likely to see the preferred parent as totally good and the rejected parent as totally bad. Although Bricklin did not use the term “splitting” in his discussion of the BPS, that appears to be what he was measuring.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2. The MMPI-2 is well-established psychological test, which is commonly used in parenting time evaluations. Siegel and Langford (1998) found that alienating mothers were more likely to complete MMPI-2 questions in a defensive manner, striving to appear as flawless as possible. Gordon, Stoffey, and Bottinelli (2008) found that parents who induced alienation in their children manifested higher scores (in the clinical range) on the MMPI-2 than control mothers and fathers (scores in the normal range), indicating primitive defenses such as splitting and projective identification.
Alienated Family Relationship Scale. Kathleen Laughrea (2002) developed the AFRS, which is administered to children. A factor analysis and reliability analysis confirmed that the two alienation scales (father alienating against mother and mother alienating against father) were reliable. Scores on this scale were related to other measures in a theoretically consistent manner indicating good validity of the measure.
Parental Alienating Behaviors Scale. Braver, Coatsworth, and Peralta (n.d.) described and tested the PABS, although this work was not published in a journal. The PABS, which consists of 6 items, was administered to mothers, fathers, and adult children to determine the presence of parental alienating behaviors.
Baker Strategies Questionnaire. Baker and Chambers (2012) developed the BSQ, a standardized measure that could be used to collect reliable and valid information about the specific alienating behaviors that a child had been exposed to and/or a parent was currently engaging in. After several rounds of piloting, the BSQ was developed, which measures 17 primary alienating behaviors.
Baker Alienation Questionnaire. Baker, Burkhard, and Albertson-Kelly (2012) introduced the BAQ, which is intended to identify alienated children using a paper-and-pencil measure that is short, easy to administer, and easy to score objectively. In their pilot study, Baker et al. found that children who had been court-ordered for reunification therapy—specifically for PA—consistently responded in a polarized fashion in which one parent was denigrated and the other was idealized. Baker et al. found that the BAQ discriminated well between alienated and nonalienated children.
Parental Alienation Scale. Cunha Gomide, Camargo, and Fernandes (2016) developed the PAS, a questionnaire to be completed by evaluators familiar with the family. The questions pertain to both the parents’ and the child’s activities and behaviors. This test distinguished alienating parents from target parents and alienated children from nonalienated children.
Rowlands’ Parental Alienation Scale. The RPAS is a questionnaire for parents designed to capture the manifestations of PA in their children, which had previously been described in the literature (Rowlands, 2018). Six significant factors were extracted representing the eight traditional behavioral symptoms of PA.
Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire. The PARQ is a questionnaire that children complete regarding their perceptions of their mothers’ and fathers’ accepting–rejecting behaviors (Bernet, Gregory, Reay, & Rohner, 2018). A study of the PARQ Gap (the absolute different between the child’s PARQ: Mother and PARQ: Father scores) found that this test was 99% accurate in distinguishing alienated from nonalienated children (Bernet, Gregory, Rohner, and Reay, 2020).
Bene-Anthony Family Relations Test. Blagg and Godrey (2018) administered the BAFRT to a population of children in the United Kingdom. The BAFRT (developed by Eva Bene and E. James Anthony in the 1950’s) is a projective test that explores indirectly children’s perceptions of their relationship with family members. Blagg and Godfrey concluded that “children in the alienated group who had not been abused or neglected by their target parent expressed almost exclusively negative (hostile) feelings towards them, while also expressing almost exclusively positive (affectionate) feelings towards their preferred parent.”
References
Baker AJL, Burkhard B, Albertson-Kelly J (2012). Differentiating alienated from not alienated children: A pilot study. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage 53:178–193.
Baker AJL, Chambers J (2011). Adult recall of childhood exposure to parental conflict: Unpacking the black box of parental alienation, Journal of Divorce & Remarriage 52: 55–76.
Bernet W, Gregory N, Reay KM, Rohner RP (2018). An objective measure of splitting in parental alienation: The Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire. Journal of Forensic Sciences 63:776–783.
Bernet W, Gregory N, Rohner RP, Reay KM (2020). Measuring the difference between alienation and estrangement: The PARQ Gap. Journal of Forensic Sciences 65:1225–1234.
Blagg N, Godfrey E (2018). Exploring parent–child relationships in alienated versus neglected/emotionally abused children using the Bene-Anthony Family Relations Test. Child Abuse Review 27:486–496.
Braver SL, Coatsworth D, Peralta K (n.d.). Alienating behavior within divorced and intact families: Matched parents’ and now-young adult children’s reports. Available online.
Bricklin B (1984). Bricklin Perceptual Scales. Furlong, PA: Village Publishing.
Cunha Gomide PI, Camargo EB, Fernandes MG (2016). Analysis of the psychometric properties of a parental alienation scale. Paidéia 26:291–298.
Gordon RM, Stoffey R, Bottinelli J (2008). MMPI-2 findings of primitive defenses in alienating parents. American Journal of Family Therapy 36:211–228.
Laughrea K (2002). Alienated Family Relationship Scale: Validation with young adults, 17 Journal of College Student Psychotherapy 17:37-48.
Rowlands GA (2018). Parental alienation: A measurement tool. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage 60:316–331.
Siegel JC, Langford JS (1998). MMPI-2 Validity scales and suspected parental alienation syndrome. American Journal of Forensic Psychology 16:5–14.