Child Abuse and Unrealistic Expectations. Further Validation of the Parent Opinion Questionnaire

This second validation study of the Parent Opinion Questionnaire (POQ) compared the unrealistic expectations of child abusing mothers (n = 16) with mothers whose partners perpetrated the abuse (n = 14). This comparison provided a more stringent test of the POQ's validity in that it controlled for nonspecific factors associated with being in a family identified for child maltreatment. As expected, significantly greater unrealistic expectations of child behavior were found for abusing mothers than for control mothers. A discriminant function analysis showed that the POQ correctly classified 83% of the subjects. This measure's clinical usefulness is discussed.