Adolescents’ Perceptions of Parenting Behavior: Validation of the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire Adolescent Self Report

The Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (APQ) is a well-validated instrument designed to assess parenting behaviors that may be associated with child conduct problems. The APQ’s original five factors were theoretically derived, encompassing positive parenting, corporal punishment, inconsistent discipline, parental involvement, and poor monitoring/supervision. To date several studies have used data-driven approaches in order to ascertain the factor structure of the child and parent report versions of the APQ, with three-, four-, and five-factor models proposed. The current study investigated the psychometric properties of the child report version of the APQ in a sample of 358 adolescents aged 11–18. Results of two separate factor analyses suggest four-factor solutions for mothers and fathers, though the factor titles and item content of these four factors differed between mothers and fathers. Follow-up individual item analyses reveal several strong correlations with child age, indicating that some APQ items may be inappropriate for an older adolescent sample. Implications of the differences in factor structures for mothers and fathers as well as strong age correlations are discussed.