Abstract
This pilot study compares the explanatory styles of adolescents, the explanatory styles of their parents, and the parents' causal explanations about their adolescents. Twenty-one adolescents with academic problems and their mothers (n =19) and fathers (n =15) completed the Attributional Style Questionnaire (Peterson et al., 1982). The parents also completed a parallel questionnaire, My Adolescent's Life (MAL). Both mothers' and fathers' explanations of events in their own lives and of events in their adolescents' lives were significantly associated. Fathers' explanations of events in their adolescents' lives were positively correlated with the adolescents' explanations of their own events. In this study, neither mothers' explanations of their own events nor of their adolescents' events nor fathers' explanations of their own events correlated with the adolescents' explanations of their own events. Significant findings with a small sample suggest that this line of inquiry and the MAL are promising for future research.
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This study was based on a master's thesis by the first author at Rutgers University under the direction of the second author. Portions of this article were presented at the annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Philadelphia, April 1990. This research was partially supported by NIDA grant DA05112 to Dr. Brenna H. Bry. The authors gratefully acknowledge the data collection assistance of Karen E. Krinsley, Shaun Whittaker, and Luis Guerreira.
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Turk, E., Bry, B.H. Adolescents' and parents' explanatory styles and parents' causal explanations about their adolescents. Cogn Ther Res 16, 349–357 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01183286
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01183286