A brief psychometric examination of the Parent-Child Gaslighting Questionnaire

Purpose: To address child maltreatment, it is necessary to be able to reliably and accuratelyassess its many forms. The purpose of the present project was to evaluate a tool for assessing oneparticular form: parent-child gaslighting. We tested the psychometric properties of a Parent-Child Gaslighting Questionnaire (PCGQ), a 10-item measure assessing one’s belief that it isacceptable to make one’s children doubt their perceptions, judgements, and memories. Method:We administered the PCGQ, as well as eight measures assessing theoretically relevantconstructs, to a census-matched sample of US parents (NTime1 = 494; NTime2 = 426). Results: Thefindings indicate that the PCGQ is fairly unidimensional, as indexed using dynamic fit indexthresholds; internally consistent, as indexed by Cronbach’s alpha (α = .86); dependable, asindexed by a test-retest correlation across two weeks (r = .71); and construct valid, as indexed byits association with eight theoretically relevant variables, including acceptance of child emotionalabuse (r = .73), physical sadism (r = .61), and positive views towards the use corporalpunishment (r = .55). Conclusion: Taken together, the present results indicate that the PCGQ isa promising measure of attitudes towards parent-child gaslighting, although we encourage futurework to further investigate its psychometric properties.