Questionnaire Session

Students returned (a median of 21 days) later to complete questionnaires, usually in groups of 2 or 3 participants. This was within the limits of test-retest reliability for the MCAI. Although the process took at least one lesson, most participants were happy to take part. One of the researchers was always on hand to guide them through the questionnaires and maintain their concentration. One or two participants with poor reading skills had difQculty in completing questionnaires unaided, so they were assisted by the researcher. Some participants were rushing through their questionnaires by the end of the session. However, a researcher checked the completed questionnaires, and the student was approached to complete any omitted items, rectify unclear answers, or check through any apparent response sets. Questionnaire data was entered twice into the computer, once by each researcher, and the accuracy of data entry was checked by subtracting one worksheet fi'om the other. After any discrepancies had been eliminated, 5% of the data-points were spoiled or missing, mainly due to children who were unable to report on interactions with fathers.

3.3. Measures 3.3.1. Parenting

A number of self-report measures of Parental Warmth and Parental Control were reviewed for this study. The initial choice was the “Index of Parenting Style” (Lambom et al., 1991) a measure of ''"parental warmth/involvemenf and ''''parental strictness/supervision” wiiich has

provided the basis for several recent large studies. However, this instrument was eventually rejected because it was relatively short, it did not differentiate different aspects of Parental Warmth or Parental Control, and the scaling procedure was unavailable. Other scales were rejected because they: failed to address both dimensions (Haapasalo & Tremblay, 1994), were unavailable (Paulson, 1994), or lacked supporting citations (Jackson, Bee Gates, & Henriksen, 1994). The Cornell Parent Behaviour Description Index (CPBDI) (Rodgers, 1971) was rejected because it asked adolescents to disclose physical punishment. Requesting such disclosures would have been unethical, as it would have exposed the participant and their family to social services investigation. It was also considered inappropriate to ask participants to disclose Abusive Parental Control in a school context.

The instrument eventually chosen was the “Child-Rearing Issues: Parent and Child” instrument (Appendix 6) developed by Mavis Hetherington and colleagues (Hetherington & Clingempeel, 1992) for a series of studies on the effects of divorce and step-parenting. The full questionnaire includes 197 questions on the adolescent’s relationships with parents, siblings and grandparents, but this study used only the questions about parents. The items on Parental Warmth ask how frequently the adolescent and the parent do various things together and how often the parent expresses affection to them. The item closest to “sensitively-responsive parenting under threat” of the kind commonly associated with attachment is whether the parent '‘‘‘talks about something that is worrying you”. The items on Parental Control ask how much the parent ‘‘‘knows a h o u f

various aspects of the adolescent’s life (this was interpreted as Monitoring Control), how much they ‘‘‘'influence” the adolescent in those aspects of life (Inductive Control), and how common it is for the parent to respond in various ways to transgressions. Responses to transgressions were divided by Hetherington and colleagues into categories called here Firm Control (talking to the adolescent about something they did wrong; taking away privileges; apologising after an argument turned out badly; compromising during a disagreement, seeing that they obey rules) and Harsh Control (yelling at the participant about something they’ve done, making fun of them or putting them down, telling them to do something ‘because I said so’). Thus Firm Control has the democratic and flexible flavour of Baumrind’s authoritative parenting style, whilst Harsh

Control has the flavour of authoritarian parenting. Questions about the adolescent’s use of drugs and alcohol wctc omitted because they were ambiguous and aroused participants’ suspicion. The

resulting questionnaire numbered 102 items. After identifying a mother and father figure, the participant was asked to complete the same questions on each parent.

In this dataset, reliability analyses on the Parental Warmth Scale produced alpha coefficients of .84 for mothers and .93 for fathers. Reliabilities for mother and father respectively on the Parental Control scales were .71 and .87 for Monitoring Control, .78 and .87 for Inductive Control, .60 and .67 for Firm Control, .65 and .69 for Harsh Control. Reliabilities on the Parental Conflict scales were .78 for mother and .84 for father. None of the scales deviated significantly fi'om the normal distribution on Kolmogorov-Smimov tests. Mean levels of Warmth for mothers were equivalent to mothers engaging in each of the parenting activities on the list 2 or 3 times in the last week, and fathers once or twice in the past week, a significant difference (t(60)=3.9, p<.001, two tailed). Mean levels of Parental Control are shown below with their standard deviations (Figure 3). Maternal Control was significantly higher on average than Paternal Control for Monitoring Control (t(60)=4.0, p<.001) and Inductive Control (t(60)=2.6, p<.01) but not higher for Firm and Harsh Control.

Mnm Monitoring Dad Monitoring' Mum Inductive- Dad Inductive- Mnm Finn Dad Finn- Figure 3

H o w com m on is Parental C ontrol?

(0=Very Uncommon, 4=Very Common)

Very Uncommon Uncommon Somewhat Common Common

Mean Plus or Minus 1 Standard Deviation

Very Comm on