Determining Child Abuse Potential with the Child Guidance Interview Subscales

A structured assessment, the Child Guidance Interview (CGI) (Infant/Preschool Form), is being developed to distinguish child abusers from non-abusers. Unlike other instruments, the CGI is designed to defeat the “fake-good” motivations of parents. The CGI presents parents with specific child guidance scenarios involving problematic child behaviors and asks parents to offer their responses. Previous CGI research has established that respondent’s adaptive or maladaptive responses correlate with child abuse potential. However, specific types of adaptive and maladaptive practices have not been investigated. The CGI is intended to identify adaptive and maladaptive practices in six categories originally identified by the Parenting as Social Context Questionnaire (PASCQ). Adaptive categories are Warmth, Structure, and Autonomy Support. Maladaptive categories are Rejection, Chaos, and Coercion. Additionally, responses were subclassified within each category. Archival evaluation records of parents, some of whom are abusers, have been collected. Parents were administered the Child Guidance Interview (CGI), along with other measures including a demographic questionnaire. Records were coded to identify presence and types of abuse. The information contained in demographic questionnaires included parent’s abuse history, foster care history, age they left home, gender, age, ethnicity, marital status, family size, SES, and education. CGI responses were coded for frequencies of adaptive and maladaptive parenting practices. Some demographic characteristics and CGI responses were modestly correlated with abuser status but were inadequate predictors of abuse