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Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ): Test Manual

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Parental Acceptance-Rejection
Questionnaire (PARQ)
Ronald P. Rohner and Sumbleen Ali
University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA
Synonyms
Adult Parental Acceptance-Rejection Question-
naire; Child Parental Acceptance-Rejection Ques-
tionnaire; Early Childhood Parental Acceptance-
Rejection Questionnaire; Parent Parental
Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire
Definition
The Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire
(PARQ) is a self-report questionnaire designed to
assess children’s current perceptions and adults’
retrospective remembrances of the degree to
which they experienced parental (maternal and
paternal) acceptance or rejection in childhood.
The measure consists of four scales: (1) warmth
and affection (or coldness and lack of affection,
when reverse scored), (2) hostility and aggression,
(3) indifference and neglect, and (4) undiffer-
entiated rejection. Undifferentiated rejection
refers to individuals’ feelings that the parent
does not really love them, want them, appreciate
them, or care about them in some other way with-
out necessarily having any objective indicator that
# Springer International Publishing AG 2016
V. Zeigler-Hill, T.K. Shackelford (eds.), Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_56-1
the parent is cold, aggressive, or neglecting. Col-
lectively, the four scales constitute an overall mea-
sure of perceived or remembered parental
acceptance-rejection in childhood.
Introduction
Structure of the PARQ. Four versions of the
PARQ are available: (1) Early Childhood PARQ,
(2) Child PARQ, (3) Adult PARQ, and (4) Parent
PARQ. All versions are nearly identical except
that the Early Childhood PARQ and Child
PARQ say “My mother [or father] does. . .,”
whereas the Adult PARQ says “My mother
[or father] did. . .,” and the Parent PARQ says “I
do. . ..”
The Early Childhood PARQ (ECPARQ) is
designed to be used with children from about
4 years of age through about 7 years of age. The
Child PARQ is designed to be used with children
from about 7 through whatever age they continue
to be in more-or-less continuous or ongoing con-
tact with their parents. The Adult PARQ is
designed to be used whenever researchers or prac-
titioners want respondents to reflect back onto an
earlier time in childhood with parents. The Parent
PARQ is used when parents want to reflect on
their current accepting-rejecting behaviors toward
their child.
All versions of the standard (i.e., long) form of
the measure contain 60 items, 20 in the warmth/
affection scale, 15 in the hostility/aggression and
2 Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ)
indifference/neglect scales, and 10 in the undiffer-
entiated rejection scale. The short forms of the
measure – including the Early Childhood
PARQ – contain 24 items, 8 in the warmth/affec-
tion scale, 6 in the hostility/aggression and indif-
ference/neglect scales, and 4 in the
undifferentiated rejection scale. Sample items on
the Mother version of the Child PARQ include the
following. My mother “lets me know she loves
me” (warmth/affection), “yells at me when she is
angry” (hostility/aggression), “pays no attention
to me” (indifference/neglect), and “does not really
love me” (undifferentiated rejection).
Response Options and Scoring the PARQ.
On all versions of the measure except for the Early
Childhood PARQ (described below), individuals
respond to items such as these on a 4-point Likert
scale from (4) “almost always true” through
(1) “almost never true.” Scores on these scales
are summed after reverse scoring the entire
warmth/affection scale to create a measure of per-
ceived coldness and lack of affection (a form of
rejection) and after reverse scoring called-for
items on the indifference/neglect scale.
Possible scores on the long (standard) forms
range from a low of 60 (maximum perceived
acceptance) through a high of 240 (maximum per-
ceived rejection). Possible scores on the short
forms range from a low of 24 (maximum per-
ceived acceptance) through a high of 96 (maxi-
mum perceived rejection). On average it takes
about 10–15 min to complete the standard ver-
sions of the PARQ. It takes about 5–10 min to
complete the short forms.
Though all versions of the PARQ are easy to
score by hand, we strongly recommend that the
researchers employ “PARScore6” (an online scor-
ing system specifically created to score the PARQ
and related measures, available from Rohner
Research Publications, www.rohnerresearchpu
blications.com, or through the Rohner Center;
www.csiar.uconn.edu). The program automati-
cally performs all required steps including reverse
scoring, computation of scale scores (including
missing data), as well as total-test scores. It
records scores in a data file that can be exported
to statistical packages such as SPSS and SAS.
Early Childhood PARQ (ECPARQ). The
ECPARQ is slightly different from all other ver-
sions of the PARQ because each item must be read
individually to young children. Though the same
4-point Likert scale is used as on all other versions
of the measures, two flash cards are also used to
help young children make a game (i.e., an enjoy-
able experience) out of the process. After reading
each item aloud to children, the test administrator
asks, “Would you say that’s true or not true about
your mother/father?”. If the child says “true,” the
test administrator asks “Would you say she/he
(4) almost always does that or she/he (3) only
sometimes does that?” If, on the other hand, the
child initially said, “That’s not true about my
mother/father,” then the test administrator asks
“Would you say she/he (2) rarely (not very
often) does that or (1) almost never does that?”
Children’s responses are marked on the test sheet
by the administrator.
Psychometric Properties of the PARQ
Psychometric Properties of the ECPARQ. The
ECPARQ is a newly developed measure. As a
result, limited evidence exists about its reliability
and validity – though research with approximately
1,500 children in Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey
shows promising results. More specifically, coef-
ficient alpha on the Mother version of the measure
in Greece (Giotsa and Theodoropoulos 2016)
was .87. In Bulgaria it was .71 (Koltcheva and
Djalev 2016) and in Turkey it was .85 (Okur and
Berument 2016). Alpha on the Father version of
the measure in Greece was .90. In Bulgaria it
was .72. The Turkish study did not use the Father
version of the ECPARQ.
Reliability of the Child, Adult, and Parent
PARQ. Khaleque and Rohner (2002) summarized
the reliability of the Child, Adult, and Parent
versions of the PARQ in a meta-analysis of
51 studies worldwide. The results strongly sug-
gest that the measure is reliable for research and
for clinical and applied purposes internationally as
well as for use among ethnic groups within the
United States. More specifically, the overall alpha
coefficient (mean weighted effect size) aggregated
Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ)
across these three versions of the PARQ and
across all ethnic and sociocultural groups of the
world was .89. More particularly, the mean
weighted alpha coefficient for the Child PARQ
was .89, for the Adult PARQ it was .95, and for
the Parent PARQ it was .84. The Early Childhood
PARQ was not included in this analysis because it
was not developed at the time of that study. This
evidence is especially compelling because no
study anywhere in the world was found where
alpha coefficients were low and nonsignificant.
Moreover, there was no significant heterogeneity
in effect sizes (alphas) across the major geo-
graphic regions of the world or within the Amer-
ican ethnic groups studied. Additionally, there
were no significant differences in effect sizes
across the three versions of the PARQ.
Validity of the Child, Adult, and Parent
PARQ. Extensive evidence about the convergent,
discriminant, and construct validity of the PARQ
is provided in Rohner (2005). Additional evi-
dence about the international measurement invari-
ance of the questionnaire is provided in two
articles. One (Gomez and Rohner 2011) tested
the factor structure and invariance of the Adult
PARQ in the United States and Australia. The
other (Senese et al. 2016) did the same in the
United States and Italy. Both studies show full
invariance of the measure across these two sets
of societies – thus providing strong evidence for
the universality of a central postulate in interper-
sonal acceptance-rejection theory (IPARTheory),
briefly described below.
Use of the PARQ
The PARQ has been used for more than four
decades with tens of thousands of children, adults,
and parents in the United States and internation-
ally. It is used extensively in research, in clinical
setting, in schools, by the courts, and in other
applied contexts. Different versions of the mea-
sure are available in up to 52 languages and dia-
lects (Rohner 2015). Very often the questionnaire
is used in conjunction with the Personality
Assessment Questionnaire (PAQ) – in the context
of research and practice drawing from
3
IPARTheory. IPARTheory is an evidence-based
theory of socialization and lifespan development
that aims to predict and explain major conse-
quences and other correlates of interpersonal
(especially parental) acceptance-rejection world-
wide (Rohner 1986, 2004, 2016). Apropos of that,
nearly six decades of international research in
every continent except Antarctica has shown that
children and adults everywhere – regardless of
differences in culture, language, race, gender, or
other such defining conditions – experience them-
selves to be cared about (accepted) or not cared
about (rejected) in the four ways measured on the
PARQ (i.e., warmth/affection, hostility/aggres-
sion, indifference/neglect, and undifferentiated
rejection).
Conclusion
From the evidence presented here – as well as
more detailed evidence available in the PARQ
Test Manual (Rohner 2015) and elsewhere – we
believe that researchers, clinicians, and other
practitioners in the United States and internation-
ally should have full confidence in using the mea-
sure for applied and research purposes.
Cross-References
▶ Personality Assessment Questionnaire (PAQ)
References
Giotsa, A., & Theodoropoulos, C. (2016). Psychometric
properties of the early childhood acceptance-rejection
questionnaire (ECARQ) in Greece. Paper presented at
the meeting of International Congress on Interpersonal
Acceptance-Rejection, Madrid.
Gomez, R., & Rohner, R. P. (2011). Tests of factor structure
and measurement invariance in the US and Australia
using the adult version of the Parental Acceptance
Rejection Questionnaire. Cross Cultural Research,
45, 267–285.
Khaleque, A., & Rohner, R. P. (2002). Reliability of mea-
sures assessing the relation between perceived parental
acceptance-rejection and psychological adjustment:
A meta-analysis of cross-cultural and intercultural stud-
ies. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 33, 86–98.
4 Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ)
Koltcheva, N., & Djalev, L. (2016). Scale structure and
reliability of Bulgarian version of early childhood
acceptance-rejection questionnaire (ECARQ). Paper
presented at the meeting of International Congress on
Interpersonal Acceptance-Rejection, Madrid.
Okur, S., & Berument, S. K. (2016). School readiness of 5-
year old children living in poverty: The role of per-
ceived parenting. Paper presented at the meeting of
International Congress on Interpersonal Acceptance-
Rejection, Madrid.
Rohner, R. P. (1986). The warmth dimension: Foundations
of parental acceptance-rejection theory. Beverly Hills:
Sage. Available as an e-book from Rohner Research
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Rohner, R. P. (2004). The parental “acceptance-rejection
syndrome”: Universal correlates of perceived rejection.
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View publication stats
Rohner, R. P. (2005). Parental Acceptance-Rejection Ques-
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