Researching Parent Abuse: A Critical Review of the Methods

Abstract

<jats:p>‘Parent abuse’ is the most under-researched form of family abuse and the research that exists is characterised by diverse and discrete methodological approaches which have produced somewhat inconsistent findings. This critical review examines these different research approaches and discusses the methodological challenges which they present. The review concludes by suggesting how research might develop to produce a more coherent and contextual methodology which does justice to the complexities of the topic.</jats:p>

Assessing Risk and Protective Factors in Clinical and Judicial Child-to-Parent Violence Cases

“…There are other general protective factors for youth offences, some shared with adult violence cases and others more specific to youth offenders, such as parental, peer, and community support, which are included in assessment tools such SAPROF-YV (see de Vries Robbé & Willis, 2017), a structured guide for the assessment of protective factors (during violence risk assessment) in youth. Holt (2012), in a critical review of research on CPV, argued that the field is a long way from understanding the relevance of specific risk factors in particular populations and from understanding whether treatment programs, or specific elements of treatment, facilitate changes in violence patterns. Recently, there have been some proposals of new assessment tools for CPV, such as the Childto-Mother Violence Scale (Edenborough, Wilkes, Jackson, & Mannix, 2011), designed to capture the prevalence, experience, and nature of child-to-mother violence, and the Intra-family Violence Scale (Ibabe et al, 2013), with nine items designed to assess the presence of violence toward parents, parent-to-child violence and betweenparent violence.…”

“…International rates on CPV are highly variable, making it difficult to determine the extent of this type of violence (O'Hara, Duchschere, Beck, & Lawrence, 2017;Simmons, McEwan, Purcell, & Ogloff, 2018). Global estimates range from 5 to18% for physical forms of CPV between different samples (Calvete, Orue, & Sampedro, 2011;Holt, 2012;Kennair & Mellor, 2007;Pagani et al, 2009). Psychological violence is much more common, making up over 90% of CPV cases if less severe forms are included.…”

Practitioner accounts of responding to parent abuse – a case study in ad hoc delivery, perverse outcomes and a policy silence

“…from young people who have been arrested, charged or convicted of violence‐related offences towards their parents) and data from clinical populations (i.e. from families who have sought medical/psychiatric support for their child's behaviour; see Holt 2012a for review). While of course there are methodological problems with such quantitative data, there is also an increasing qualitative literature which has highlighted the physical and psychological impact of parent abuse, with many studies identifying mental health problems, such as clinical distress, anxiety and depression (e.g.…”

Factores de riesgo de violencia filio-parental: Una aproximación con juicio de expertos

“…Otros, sin embargo, son menos habituales. La investigación también ha puesto de manifiesto la necesidad de consensuar definiciones y desarrollar herramientas para la valoración del riesgo de violencia en casos de VFP (Holt, 2013), así como entender cómo determinadas variables se convierten en factores de riesgo en poblaciones concretas (Holt, 2012).…”