Parent Abuse: validation of a new scale for causal attribution by adolescents

This study focuses on Parent Abuse, that is acted violence to parents by their teenage children, including any adolescent’s behaviour that causes physical, psychological, financial damage to parents (Cottrell, 2001). It is important examining causes and growing of this new form of violence in family, looking for meaning of violent action in family relationships and creating tools for studyng the complexity of this phenomenon (Bobic, 2004; Calvete et al., 2013). The aim of this study is validating Adolescent to Parent Abuse Scale (APAS), a Likert 5-points scale that measures adolescents causal attribution toward acted violence to parents. APAS was completed by a sample of 416 adolescents (age range: 13-18 years old). Exploratory factor analysis supported a two factor structure (internal attribution and external attribution) that statistically explain 31% of the total variance.Internal Attribution refers to reasons of violence to adolescents’ transition period and to family communication; violence should have an expressive function (Cronbach α =.68).External Attribution refers to reasons of violence in social models, like family, school and peer group (Cronbach α =.65).