PICTURE-CARD VERSION FOR YOUNG CHILDREN

OF THE PARENT-TO-CHILD CONFLICT TACTICS SCALES

 

Copyright  2002 by Carolyn Mebert and Murray A. Straus

 

The CTS has been used in a number of studies to measure physical and psychological maltreatment of children (see paper CTS17 on this website).   The standard version (called the CTSPC) is designed for parents as the respondent.  There is also a child-report/adult-recall version (Paper CTS24 ).   However, from about age 10 and younger, an increasingly large percent of children have difficulty responding, especially if they are part of a population with cognitive limitations.  We therefore developed the picture-card version for children which is on the following pages.   This version is:

 

·         For children age 6 to 9

 

·         Presents items in the form of pictures depicting acts of maltreatment, accompanied by a verbal statement such as “This child’s father punches him.”

 

·         Provides scores for less and more severe physical and psychological maltreatment, and also parents’ use of non-violent discipline strategies.

 

·         22 items.  Testing time about 15 minutes.

 

METHOD OF ADMINISTRATION.  As each card is shown, the examiner reads a description such as “This girl’s father shook her when she did something wrong”  The child is asked if they are like the child in the picture.  If the response is yes, a second card is presented.  The card shows the response categories in the form of stacked circles that the child can point to.  The examiner reads the response category labels corresponding to each stack (Never, Once, A few times, Many Times, Every Time) and asks the child to point to.

 

PERMISSION TO USE.  If this instrument (which we call the CTSPC-P) might be useful for you, or if you just want to help in developing an important new instrument, we are eager to work with you.  We will provide whatever assistance is appropriate, such as papers describing the CTS, consultation and suggestions.  If there are enough cases for statistical analysis, you can send us the raw data, we will enter it into an SPSS file, score the protocols, tabulate the data in a format that fits your needs and send you the data file and the tabulation.

 

We request only that you provide a description of your experience administering the test. In addition, if enough cases are tested, we would like to publish some psychometric data  (frequency distribution, reliability, factor structure, etc), crediting you with providing the data.  You retain the exclusive right to use the data for all other purposes.

 

If you are interested, click here to send an e-mail to request permission to use the picture-card version of the CTS.

 

 

CLICK HERE TO SEE PICTURE CARDS