Parent Adolescent Relationship Questionnaire (PARQ)

Purpose: Understand the parent-adolescent relationship

Age: 11-18 years

Administration: Self-report; Individual and/or group

Time:  25-35 minutes

The Parent Adolescent Relationship Questionnaire (PARQ) examines the relationships between adolescents and parents and enables you to plan effective treatments through an understanding of the multifaceted adolescent-parent relationship.

Based in behavioural family systems therapy (BFST), the PARQ provides information organized into three domains (Overt Conflict/Skill Deficits, Beliefs, and Family Structure) that can help you determine the best mode of intervention.

The PARQ allows you to emphasise problem-solving and communication skills, cognitive restructuring of extreme beliefs and distorted thinking, and/or specific problems in family functioning in subsequent interventions.

In addition, the effectiveness of individual and family interventions can be measured by periodically readministering the PARQ to determine whether significant change has occurred. The PARQ also can be used as an outcome measure in treatment effectiveness research as well as a process measure in family interaction, adolescent development, and theoretical research.

Key Features

• Separate forms for adolescents and parents are written at a 5th-grade reading level and in the first person to elicit current thoughts.
• Two validity scales and 12 clinical scales assess the parent-adolescent relationship in detail
• Scales assess global distress and conflict in the realms of communication, problem solving, school, siblings, and eating behaviour.
• Scales also assess various maladaptive beliefs including autonomy, ruination, unfairness, perfectionism, and malicious intent.
• Scales assess family structure and functioning including cohesion, coalitions (side-taking), and triangulation (putting family members in the middle of conflict).
• Reliable change scores and T score and percentile ranges are provided separately for adolescents, mothers, and fathers.
• Average profiles are included for ADHD, ODD, anxiety, depression, eating disorder, and spina bifida clinical groups.