Background/Objective: Child-to-parent violence has generated great interest on the part of professionals and researchers in recent years. Consequently, there is a need to provide an assessment instrument that includes a wide range of child-to-parent violence behaviours and all of elements that define this type of violence. Thus, the purpose of the current study was to analyse the structure, reliability and validity of the CPV-Q, an instrument to assess child-to-parent violence behaviours, including the reasons for aggression against parents. Method: A total of 1,386 Spanish adolescents (55.2% females; M _age = 14.7, SD = 1.7) were assessed using the CPV-Q. We obtained descriptive statistics of the items, the internal structure of the scale using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, its reliability, and external evidence of its validity. Results: Data indicated a matrix of 4 factors with 14 parallel items (for the father and for the mother). Reasons for child-to-parent violence were grouped into instrumental and reactive reasons. Conclusion: The CPV-Q presents adequate psychometric properties; thus, it is proposed as a useful instrument to assess child-to-parent violence in both professional and research settings.

This study aimed to explore some psychological features of adolescents who have been reported by their parents for being violent towards them, analysing how they differ from other young offenders and from non-offender adolescents. Concretely, the presence of clinical diagnosis was explored and whether these juveniles received some psychological/psychiatric treatment. Moreover, this study examined substance use and some variables that characterise the social-cognitive style of these juveniles, along with the level of self-esteem. Information concerning clinical diagnosis and psychological/psychiatric treatment was extracted from the young offenders’ legal files. Measures included the social-cognitive subscale from the attitudes and social-cognitive strategies questionnaire (AECS), Rosenberg self-esteem scale, and a structured interview to assess substance use. Results indicated that juveniles who assaulted their parents present a different profile when compared to the other groups, as they showed a higher presence of psychopathology and more social-cognitive difficulties. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for the design and implementation of specific treatments with these aggressive adolescents.

Some authors have proposed that the mechanisms underlying adolescent-to-parent abuse seem to be different from other forms of juvenile delinquency. Given that this aggression is exerted within the family setting, our study was aimed to explore if there was a differential family profile for those adolescents who commit a parent abuse offense compared to those who commit other types of offenses. Judicial files of 1,046 young offenders from the Juvenile Justice Service of Jaén (Spain) were examined. The final sample (654 young offenders) was divided into 2 groups: those who had committed offenses against a parent (parent abuse group) and those who had committed other types of offenses (other offenses group). Results showed that families with parent abuse have differential characteristics, especially regarding the family size, type of household, parenting styles, and the patterns of interactions between the family members.