Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (APQ)

Assessment Rating:
A
A – Psychometrics Well-Demonstrated
See entire scale
Developer(s):

Paul J. Frick, PhD

Description / Purpose:

The Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (APQ) is designed to measure positive and negative parenting practices.

The APQ is a copyright protected 42-item questionnaire that measures several dimensions of parenting that have proven to be important for understanding the causes of conduct problems and delinquency in youth: Positive Reinforcement, Parental Involvement, Inconsistent Discipline, Poor Monitoring and Supervision, and Harsh Discipline. There are both a parent form and a child form.

Target Population: Children 6–18 years

Time to Administer: Not specified

Completed By: Parent form: Parents or caregivers; Child form: Self-report

Modalities Available: Pen and paper

Scoring Information: Hand scored. Sum all items in the scale to obtain a total scale score.

Languages Available: Chinese, Dutch, English, German, Norwegian, Spanish

Training Requirements for Intended Users: None

Availability: Researchers are allowed to download and use the APQ free of charge in their work. Dr. Frick requests that copies of any publications using the APQ are sent to him at pfrick@uno.edu

Contact Information

Company: University of New Orleans, Department of Psychology
Website: fs.uno.edu/pfrick/APQ.html
Name: Paul J. Frick, PhD
Email:

Summary of Relevant Psychometric Research

This tool has received the Measurement Tools Rating of "A – Psychometrics Well-Demonstrated" based on the published, peer-reviewed research available. The tool must have 2 or more published, peer-reviewed studies that have established the measure’s psychometrics (e.g., reliability and validity, sensitivity and specificity, etc.). Please see the Measurement Tools Rating Scale for more information.

Show relevant research...

Shelton, K. K., Frick, P. J., & Wootton, J. (1996). Assessment of parenting practices in families of elementary school-age children. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 25(3), 317–329. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15374424jccp2503_8

Sample:

Participants — 160 families of children ages 6-13

Race/Ethnicity — 75% Caucasian

Summary:

This study examined the reliability and validity of the APQ. Scores across the 4 administration periods were highly consistent, suggesting that the measure provides a stable estimate of the construct.  Convergent and divergent validity were also demonstrated for the parent-completed versions of the measure, and the measure distinguished families of children with disruptive behavior diagnoses from control families.

Frick, P. J., Christian, R. E., & Wootton, J. M. (1999). Age trends in the association between parenting practices and conduct problems. Behavior Modification, 23(1), 106–128. https://doi.org/10.1177/0145445599231005

Sample:

Participants — 179 clinic-referred children and adolescents

Race/Ethnicity — 27% African American

Summary:

The internal consistency of the APQ scales tended to be highest in the adolescent age group. Also, the only parenting construct that showed uniformly poor internal consistency was the Corporal Punishment scale, most likely due in part to the fact that it consisted of only three items.  Item-total correlations were also inspected across each age group to determine whether any items were differentially related to their respective parenting constructs across the different assessment formats and age groups. In general, the items seemed to perform similarly across age groups and assessment formats. There were some differences in the validity of the various assessment formats for predicting conduct problems, however. That is, for both the young and middle age groups, parental report of all of the parenting practices using either the global or interview report format seemed to show the strongest association with conduct problems across all of the parenting dimensions. In contrast, in the adolescent sample, the child's self-report of parental involvement showed stronger associations with conduct problems than did the parental re-port of involvement. However, even in this older group, parental re-port of discipline practices continued to show the stronger association with conduct problems than did child report.

Dadds, M., Maujean, A., & Fraser, J. (2003). Parenting and conduct problems in children: Australian data and psychometric properties of the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire. Australian Psychologist, 38, 238–241. https://doi.org/10.1080/00050060310001707267

Sample:

Participants — 802 4- to 9-year-old Australian children

Race/Ethnicity — The majority of families were Caucasian of European descent; minorities of Asian, Indigenous, and Pacific Island cultures were also present (< 10%).

Summary:

This study evaluated the APQ with a large community sample of 4- to 9-year-old Australian children. The results showed good internal consistency, validity, and test-retest reliability for the measure. Means, standard deviations, and proposed cut-off scores are presented.  These data indicate the APQ is potentially a useful measure for clinicians and researchers working with Australian samples of children with conduct problems and their families.

Essau, C. A., Sasagawa, S., & Frick, P. J. (2006). Psychometric properties of the Alabama parenting questionnaire. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 15(5), 595–614.

Sample:

Participants — 1,219 German school-children (644 boys and 575 girls), ages 10–14 years

Race/Ethnicity — Almost all the sample was of German origin (94%), with the remainder coming from other ethnic back-grounds, mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe.

Summary:

The APQ was subjected to exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Exploratory factor analysis produced five factors that were largely consistent with the a priori scale structure. These factors included dimensions of parental involvement, positive parenting, poor monitoring/supervision, inconsistent discipline, and corporal punishment. Fit indexes from confirmatory factor analyses suggested that the five factor model represented a satisfactory solution for the data, with some minor modification in scale content.

Date Reviewed: July 2020 (Originally reviewed in July 2020)