The Parent Adult-Child Relationship Questionnaire (PACQ): The assessment of the relationship of adult children to their parents

Abstract

We review current understanding of the parent adult-child relationship, describe the development of an instrument to measure this relationship and propose key themes which define the relationship. A 97-item self-report questionnaire was administered to two convenience samples (N = 302, N = 100) comprising primary care patients and community residents. The most interpretable solutions to Principal Components Analyses of a reduced pool of items were, for the mother, an orthogonal two-factor solution (regard and responsibility , comprising 13 items) and, for the father, a three-factor solution (regard, responsibility and control, comprising 13 items).The Parent Adult-Child Questionnaire (PACQ) was found to be valid and reliable as a self-report measure of the filial relationship.We suggest that PACQ has both clinical and research utility.