Poster Session #2: UC Ballroom

Defeating the Social Desirability Bias in Child Abusers

Presentation Type

Poster

Faculty Mentor’s Full Name

Paul Silverman

Faculty Mentor’s Department

Psychology

Abstract / Artist's Statement

Various measures are used to detect child abuse; however, many of them are limited in validity by a social desirability bias. Abusers likely are motivated to “fake good.” For example, the widely-used Child Abuse Potential Inventory (CAP) has high face validity, meaning it is fairly obvious what each question is measuring, thus making it easier to lie or “fake good.” The CAP Lie Scale detects but does not counter this. To address this weakness, the Child Guidance Inventory (CGInv) presents respondents with specific child guidance scenarios involving problematic child behaviors and has them rate a set of responses to each scenario in which the undesirable answers are ambiguous. This inventory was derived from The Child Guidance Interview (CGI), an open-ended interview developed by this research team. It is intended to produce information about maladaptive practices in three categories originally identified by the Parenting as Social Context Questionnaire (PASCQ): Rejection, Chaos, and Coercion. Additionally, responses were subcategorized within each category. The goals of the present study were (1) to identify and remove responses that have high face validity and low inter-rater agreement and (2) to produce a prototypical inventory to be administered to parents. The prototype that resulted contained 15 scenarios and 115 responses. The inventory’s effectiveness has yet to be tested.

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Apr 12th, 3:00 PM Apr 12th, 4:00 PM

Defeating the Social Desirability Bias in Child Abusers

UC Ballroom

Various measures are used to detect child abuse; however, many of them are limited in validity by a social desirability bias. Abusers likely are motivated to “fake good.” For example, the widely-used Child Abuse Potential Inventory (CAP) has high face validity, meaning it is fairly obvious what each question is measuring, thus making it easier to lie or “fake good.” The CAP Lie Scale detects but does not counter this. To address this weakness, the Child Guidance Inventory (CGInv) presents respondents with specific child guidance scenarios involving problematic child behaviors and has them rate a set of responses to each scenario in which the undesirable answers are ambiguous. This inventory was derived from The Child Guidance Interview (CGI), an open-ended interview developed by this research team. It is intended to produce information about maladaptive practices in three categories originally identified by the Parenting as Social Context Questionnaire (PASCQ): Rejection, Chaos, and Coercion. Additionally, responses were subcategorized within each category. The goals of the present study were (1) to identify and remove responses that have high face validity and low inter-rater agreement and (2) to produce a prototypical inventory to be administered to parents. The prototype that resulted contained 15 scenarios and 115 responses. The inventory’s effectiveness has yet to be tested.