Soc Psychol Educ (2013) 16:95–109DOI 10.1007/s11218-012-9200-8

Whose fault is it anyway: How do parents respondto their child’s setbacks?

Marnie Shapiro · Ellie Kazemi · Bernard Weiner

Received: 16 January 2012 / Accepted: 19 July 2012 / Published online: 7 August 2012© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Abstract We documented what parents report as the cause of their child’s aca-demic and conduct setbacks and what they say they do in response. We recruited anopportunity sample of 479 parents and narrowed our sample to parents of childrenwithout disabilities between the ages of 5–18 (N = 312). Parents responded to open-ended questions, and we coded responses into categories of disciplinary tactics andtypes of attributions. Parents who reported experience with child setbacks signifi-cantly differed from parents who did not report such experience on several outcomevariables. Parents did not exhibit hedonic biasing such that most reported causes of set-backs were controllable by the child; reported controllable causes correlated with thereported use of punishment. Our findings suggest that parental behavior change effortsmust also address parents’ attributions, or verbal explanations, of causes of events. Wediscuss implications of our findings for child and parent researchers, educators, andpractitioners.

Keywords Parents · Children · Discipline · Attributions

1 Introduction

Parent related variables are found to be important determinants of child well-being inacademic, social, and psychosocial domains which is the reason professionals working

M. Shapiro (B) · E. KazemiPsychology Department, California State University, Northridge (CSUN), 18111 Nordhoff Street,Northridge, CA 91330-8255, USAe-mail: marnie.shapiro.3@my.csun.edu

B. WeinerPsychology Department, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, CA 90095,USA

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with children are heavily invested in securing parental collaboration. To date, profes-sionals, such as educators or practitioners rely on literature which focuses on paren-tal styles or types (e.g., Baldry and Farrington 2000; Baumrind 1971; Brown andWhiteside 2008; Hair et al. 2009), parenting practices and parenting perceptions ofdifferent ethnic or cultural groups (e.g., Bornstein and Cote 2004; Vazsonyi 2004;Xing et al. 2011), maternal versus paternal relationships and child outcomes (Milevskyet al. 2008; Reitman and Asseff 2010), factors that affect parenting and child rear-ing (e.g., parental stress, support systems, and socioeconomic status; Maccoby 2002;Smith 2010), parenting intervention and education (e.g., Kazdin and Whitley 2006;Richardson et al 2005; Turner et al. 2011), and connections between parental involve-ment and child academic outcomes (Catsambis 2001; Cheung and Pomerantz 2011;Georgiou 1996). Although the studies mentioned provide support for the hypothesizedrelationships between parenting factors and child outcomes, key questions remainunanswered: what do parents report as major causes of child setbacks and what is itthat parents do to get their child to do better?

To answer our research questions, which centered on parents’ disciplinary tacticsand self-reported causes of events, we relied on the principles from attribution theory(Heider 1958; Weiner 1986, 1995). This theory focuses on the relationship betweenoutcomes, such as success and failure (what we refer to as setbacks), and perceivedcauses of events, such as the lack of ability, the absence of effort, and/or a poor teacher.According to the attributional model, perceived causes of events share common prop-erties, including locus of control (i.e., located within the student or within his or herenvironment) and controllability (i.e., controllable or not by the child). For example,lack of student aptitude as a cause of setbacks differs from an absence of effort inthat, although both are located within the child, only effort is perceived as subject tovolitional change. Furthermore, although neither low aptitude nor poor teaching maybe perceived as amenable by the child, only the former is located within the studentwhereas the latter resides in the student’s environment (see Weiner 1995). In this study,we focused on two particular areas of attributional research we believed were mostrelevant for examining parental strategies.

1.1 Attributional error or hedonic biasing

According to the attributional model, an attributional error (or hedonic bias) is com-mitted when an individual assumes personal responsibility for successes but transfersresponsibility to others or events for setbacks (Weiner 1995). In case of parents, attri-butional researchers propose that this bias appears to be twofold: when a parent isself-evaluating they are inclined to take personal credit for their child’s achievementsbut deny self-attribution or responsibility for their child’s setbacks (see Himelsteinet al. 1991). Along the same lines, when evaluating their child, parents are inclinedto ascribe the cause of their child’s achievements to the child’s ability (see Ryktonenet al. 2005) and setbacks to teachers or peers (Miller et al. 2002). Thus, it is purportedthat parents see their children as extensions of themselves, thereby making favorablebias attributions (i.e., have a hedonic bias) regarding their child’s outcomes, whichmay influence parental practice. There is some research evidence that the hedonic bias

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is not found consistently across all populations (see Bornstein and Cote 2004; Tollisonet al. 1987). However, despite these noted exceptions, there is empirical evidence forparental hedonic bias in the Western culture (Miller et al. 2002). In this study, we setout to examine if parents show a hedonic bias; that is, we hypothesize that parentswould exhibit a hedonic bias such that they would more often attribute the cause oftheir child’s setbacks to the child’s peers, teachers, or individuals other than their childrather than to the child.

1.2 The relationship between attributions and subsequent actions

According to attribution theory, causal beliefs and their dimensional properties oflocus, stability, and controllability guide subsequent action. Weiner (1986, 1995) con-tends that setbacks, perceived as subject to volitional control by the individual, resultin inferences of personal responsibility, anger, and retaliation. Conversely, actionsperceived to be due to causes uncontrollable by the individual result in beliefs ofnon-responsibility, sympathy, and the absence of retaliatory punishment (see Weiner(1995)). Therefore, according to this model, setbacks due to perceived lack of effort(i.e., controllable by child) are likely to result in more punitive reactions than setbacksdue to low ability and poor teaching (i.e., not controllable by child).

There is some research evidence for the lineage between attribution of child behav-ior and parental disciplinary methods. For example, Dix et al. (1989) conducted a studyin which they randomly assigned 117 mothers to one of three conditions across whichthe authors used scenarios to manipulate perceptions of child’s level of knowledgeof wrongdoing (i.e., child’s level of control). After each scenario, mothers rated boththeir affect (i.e., from “not at all upset” to “extremely upset”) and their disciplinarytactic (i.e., from “calm induction” to “stern punishment”). Dix and colleagues foundthat compared to mothers in the no knowledge condition, mothers in the knowledgecondition reported to be significantly more upset and more likely to choose sternpunishment [see similar studies such as Goodnow and Collins (1990) and Slep andO’Leary (1998)]. Furthermore, physically punitive parents are more likely than non-physically punitive parents to report the causes of their child’s setbacks as under thechild’s volitional control (see Haskett et al. 2003; MacKinnon-Lewis et al. 1992).Taking these findings into account, we hypothesized that compared to parents who donot perceive their child’s setback as controllable by the child, parents who do perceivetheir child’s setback as controllable will be more likely to report using punishment.

1.3 Present study

The majority of published attributional studies used surveys with either Likert scalesor multiple-choice options. The disadvantage of this approach is that there is scantliterature that documents all of the strategies parents actually employ to change theirchild’s behavior and researchers need such information to develop forced-choice ques-tions that encourage accurate responses from parents. Another approach attributionalresearchers often use is hypothetical vignettes to give the participants real-life sce-narios with contexts to evoke responses that may more accurately reflect genuine

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behaviour. Although vignettes are frequently used in attributional studies, the disad-vantage of employing this method is that responses may be influenced by the vignettesthemselves and may not truly represent how parents react when their child exhibitssetbacks (see Lucas et al. 2009; Wanless and Jahoda 2002; Weigal et al. 2006, forcriticisms regarding the use of vignettes).

To address the aforementioned limitations and extend previous research, we usedopen-ended questions to obtain freely generated descriptive responses from parentsregarding their perceived causes of events. Furthermore, to address concerns regardingthe use of vignettes, we asked parents if their child experienced incidents of setbacksto examine if there were differences between parents who reported experiencing priorchild setbacks versus those who had not. We hypothesize that compared to parentswho do not report experiencing child setbacks, parents who do report experience withsetbacks will differ on outcome variables such as locus of control and the use ofpunishment. Lastly, we categorized setbacks into two domains: a setback in academicperformance (e.g., child did poorly on a test, received a bad report card from theteacher, etc.), and a setback in personal conduct in school (e.g., disrupted the class-room, was disrespectful to the teacher or other kids in school, missed or arrived lateto classes, etc.).

In this study, our intent was to address the limitations in the literature and captureparental reports of cause and subsequent actions in response to their child’s setbacksby asking parents to respond to open-ended questions through the use of a survey.We hypothesize that (1) parents would exhibit a hedonic bias such that they wouldmore often attribute the cause of their child’s setbacks to the child’s peers, teachers, orindividuals other than their child rather than to the child, (2) compared to parents whodo not report their child’s setback as controllable by the child, parents who do reporttheir child’s setback as controllable will be more likely to report using punishment,and (3) compared to parents who do not report experiencing child setbacks, parentswho do report experience with setbacks will differ on outcome variables such as locusof control and the use of punishment.

2 Method

2.1 Participants

For detailed description of parents and children see Table 1.We recruited an oppor-tunity sample of 479 parents from the Southern California region and excludedparents who reported having children between the ages of one to four or above eigh-teen (117 respondents), and parents who reported having children with disabilities(41 respondents). Out of the remaining 312 parent respondents, the majority weremothers (62.7 %), followed by fathers (29.3 %), with a few legal guardians (8.0 %).The majority of the participants were Caucasian (40.2 %) and married (64.1 %). Over-all, 171 of the 312 (i.e., 54.8 %) parents reported experiencing prior academic orconduct difficulties with their children (more specifically, 71 (41.5 %) reported bothacademic and conduct setbacks, 63 (36.8 %) reported only academic, and 37 (21.6 %)

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Table 1 Description of parents and children (N = 312)

Description of parents N % Description of children N %

Ethnicity Gender of the child

Caucasian 125 40.2 Girls 138 44.5

Asian 20 6.4 Boys 172 55.5

Latino 107 34.4 Total 310

African American 36 11.6

Other 23 7.4 Age of the child

Total 311 Age 5–11 129 41.3

Age 12–18 183 58.7

Total 312

Parent education level Academic level of the child

Below high school 8 2.6 Kindergarten 17 5.7

High school 120 38.7 Elementary 92 30.6

Bachelors degree 135 43.5 Junior high school 85 28.2

Above bachelors degree 47 15.2 High school 88 29.2

Total 310 In college 19 6.3

Total 301

Marital status

Single/never married 47 15.1 Number of siblings

Married 200 64.1 None (single child) 79 25.6

Divorced 44 14.1 1 sibling 120 39.0

Separated 17 5.4 2 siblings 69 22.4

Widowed 4 1.3 3 or more 40 13.0

Total 312 Total 308

reported having faced only conduct setbacks). A total of 141 (or 45.2 %) parents didnot report facing any difficulties in either domain.

2.2 Procedure

We trained 10 Research Assistants (RAs) to approach and recruit parent participants.The RAs, who were blind to the study’s research hypotheses, disseminated UniversityIRB approved fliers at local public areas (e.g., nearby schools) to inform potentialparticipants of the study. To ensure anonymity, the RAs instructed the parents to eithermail the survey to the research team at UCLA, to hand the survey in a sealed envelopeto the in-field RAs, or to submit the form anonymously online. We offered a paper-pencil version (N = 259) as well as an online version of the survey (N = 53; 17.0 %)in both English (N= 27; 89.1 %) and Spanish (N = 34; 10.9 %).

The survey contained twelve questions regarding the parents’ background (e.g.,marital status, age, education level) and their oldest school-aged child (e.g., gender,grade level, and disability status). We asked parents if their oldest school-aged child

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had ever performed poorly in school and instructed parents who responded “no” toanswer the proceeding questions by following the subsequent prompt: “Please thinkWHAT IF your child WERE to do poorly in school.” Next, we asked parents “Whatwould you say is the cause of this poor behavior?” and to “Describe what you did (ormay do) to get your child to do better.” Parents then read, “There are parents that giveor offer to give something or take away or threaten to take away something when theirchild has done poorly in school. Could you tell us about some things you may haveoffered or taken away?” We asked the same questions regarding their child’s conduct.The order in which academic and conduct questions appeared were counterbalancedacross participants to minimize primacy and carry-over effects.

The second author then reviewed a random sample of the descriptive responses,noted the common disciplinary tactics that parents offered (6 strategies, 4 rewards,and 5 punishments with an added option of “other” for each category), and developeda structured response sheet for two trained coders (RAs). The coding sheet requiredthe RAs, who were blind to research hypotheses, to identify attributional locus andcontrollability (i.e., internal vs. external and controllable vs. uncontrollable). RAsthen matched the parents’ descriptive response to the corresponding disciplinary tac-tics outlined by the second author on the coding sheet and categorized the responsesas strategies, rewards, and punishments. Lastly, the coders recorded the total numberof checked-off responses under each category.

3 Results

3.1 Inter-rater reliability

For inter-rater reliability analyses, we randomly selected 10 % (i.e., 35 parentresponses) of the data for both RAs to independently code. We computed inter-rateragreement using the Kappa statistic. Kappa values that range between 0.21 and 0.40are considered fair, 0.41–0.61 are considered moderate, 0.61–0.80 are considered sub-stantial, and 0.81–0.99 are considered almost perfect agreement (see Landis and Koch1977 for interpretation of Kappa). Inter-rater agreement of the locus and controllabil-ity dimensions were Kappa = 0.77 (p < 0.001), 95 % CI (0.52, 1.0) and Kappa = 0.70(p < 0.001), 95 % CI (0.43, 0.97), respectively. In the conduct domain, Kappas were =0.65 (p < 0.001), 95 % CI (0.38, 0.92) and Kappa = 0.49 (p = 0.007), 95 % CI (0.14,0.84) respectively. We computed Pearson correlation coefficients to assess inter-raterreliability across total number of reported strategies, rewards, or punishments. In theacademic domain the correlation coefficients were r(35) = 0.86, p < .001, r(35) =0.84, p < 0.001, and r(35) = 0.82, p < .001, respectively. In the conduct domainthe correlation coefficients were r(35) = 0.85, p < 0.001, r(35) = 0.91, p < 0.001,and r(35) = 0.87, p < 0.001, respectively.

3.2 Basic differences between parental respondents

For a description of differences between parental respondents, see Table 2. We con-ducted descriptive analyses and used α = 0.1 as our critical cut-off given the applied,

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Table 2 Differences between parental respondents on attributions and reactions

Description ofresponses

Experience w/Child setback

No experience w/Child setback

Total (N) % or Mm Total (N) % or M χ2 t p

Demographic differences

Parent

Mothers 104 48.8 109 51.2 2.13 0.17

Fathers 37 39.8 56 62.2

Child

Girls 60 43.8 77 56.2 0.76 0.42

Boys 82 48.8 86 51.2

Kinder/elementary school 40 37.0 68 63.0 5.24 0.07*

Junior high school 41 49.4 42 50.6

High school/College 45 52.3 41 47.7

Total (academic) 165 53.8 142 46.3

Lack of effort ormotivation fromchild

63 38.2 60 42.3 2.04 0.16

Child seekingnegative attention

13 7.9 19 13.4 2.47 0.14

Child’s friends 11 6.7 16 11.3 2.01 0.16

Child’s satisfactionw/teacher orsubject matter

6 3.6 12 8.5 3.21 0 .09*

Family problems orparental lack ofeffort

10 6.1 18 12.7 1.38 0.32

Parents’ divorce 10 6.1 9 6.3 0.33 0.64

No. of punishments stated 142 1.11m 165 .85m 2.93 0.01**

Total (conduct) 104 41.3 148 58.7

Lack of effort ormotivation fromchild

14 13.5 9 6.1 4.01 0.07*

Child seekingnegative attention

46 44.2 43 29.1 5.94 0.02*

Child’s friends 16 15.4 29 20.0 0.75 0.41

Child’s satisfactionw/teacher orsubject matter

3 2.9 3 2.0 0.19 0.69

Family problems orparental lack ofeffort

3 2.9 17 11.5 6.12 0.02*

Parents’ divorce 5 4.8 22 14.9 6.50 0.01**

No. of punishmentsstated

110 1.10m 179 0.74m 3.58 0.01**

∗ p ≤ 0.10; ∗∗ p ≤ 0.01;χ2 (2-sided)

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open-ended nature of this study (see Cohen 1977). First, we conducted analysesto detect if there were demographic differences between parental respondents whoreported setbacks versus those who did not report setbacks. We found no statisticallysignificant differences between mothers and fathers and parents of girls versus boyson reports of setbacks in the academic domain. However, when examining child’s agegroup we found that parents of kindergarten or elementary age children were signifi-cantly less likely to report setbacks compared to parents of junior high and high schoolage children, 37.0 versus 63.0 %; χ2 (2, N = 277) = 5.24, p = 0.07). In the conductdomain, we found no statistically significant differences between mothers and fathersand child age groups. However, when examining child’s gender we found that com-pared to parents of girls, parents of boys were more likely to report that their childexperienced conduct setbacks (50.0 vs. 23.0 % χ2 (1, N = 287) = 22.28, p < 0.01).

In the academic domain we found that compared to parents who did not reportsetbacks, parents who did report that their child exhibited setbacks were significantlymore likely to punish in response to the setback, t (305) = 2.93, p < 0.01; M = 1.11,SD = 0.80 versus M = 0.85, SD = 0.74. Furthermore, compared to parents who didnot report that their child exhibited any setbacks, parents who did report that theirchild exhibited some setbacks were significantly more likely to attribute the causeof the setback to child’s level of satisfaction with the teacher or subject matter (8.5vs. 3.6 %; χ2(1, N = 307) = 3.21, p = 0.09). We also found differences betweenparents in the conduct domain such that compared to parents who did not reportthat their child exhibited any setbacks, parents who did report that their child exhib-ited setbacks were significantly more likely to punish in response to the setback,t (287) = 3.58, p < 0.01; M = 1.10, SD = 0.83 versus M = 0.74, SD = 0.81. Further-more, we found that compared to parents who did not report that their child exhibitedany setbacks, parents who did report that their child exhibited setbacks were signif-icantly more likely to attribute the cause of the setback to divorce (14.9 vs. 4.8 %;χ2(1, N = 252) = 6.50, p = 0.01) and family problems or parental lack of effort(11.5 vs. 2.9 %; χ2(1, N = 252) = 6.12, p = 0.02). Additionally, parents who expe-rienced setbacks were more likely to report key determinants of setbacks as childseeking negative attention (44.2 vs. 29.1; χ2(1, N = 256) = 5.94, p = 0.02) andlack of effort (13.5 vs. 6.1 %; χ2(1, N = 252) = 4.01, p = 0.07). Given the noteddifferences between parents who reported child setbacks and those who did not, wefocused on only those parents who reported child setbacks.

3.3 Attribution error (hedonic bias)

For a description of parents’ reported causes, see Table 3. The most prevalent attri-butions parents offered to explain their child’s academic setbacks were internal andcontrollable by the child (50.0 % of academic and 53.6 % of conduct). Within thiscategory, most parents identified lack of effort from child (44.4 %) and child seekingnegative attention (13.4 %) as primary causes of poor academic performance. Thesedifferences were not affected by parent’s gender, child’s gender or child’s age group.However, the child’s age had a slight significance: parents of children who were injunior high or high school were more likely to attribute cause of academic setbacks

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Table 3 Parents’ attributions of their children’s academic and conduct performances

Dimensions and reported causes Academic Conduct

N % N %

Internal to child

Controllable 71 50.0 59 53.6

Lack of effort (“laziness”) 63 44.4 14 12.7

Child seeks negative attention 19 13.4 46 41.8

Child gets bored, doesn’t like school 12 8.5 3 2.7

Child’s study habits or laziness 4 2.8 1 0.9

Child did not sleep or eat well 4 2.8 2 1.8

Uncontrollable 17 12.0 6 5.5

Child himself/herself (ability) 18 12.7 4 3.6

Child was sick; age related issues 1 0.7 2 1.8

External to child

Controllable 16 11.3 16 14.5

Friends; bad influence 16 11.3 16 14.5

Extracurricular activity 3 2.1 1 0.9

Uncontrollable 32 22.5 17 15.5

Teacher or school was problem 12 8.5 8 7.3

Parental lack of effort 10 7.0 3 2.7

Parent’s divorce; family problems 10 7.0 5 4.5

Total number of causes 142 110

to external and controllable causes (e.g., friends) compared to parents of youngerchildren (15.4, 18.2, and 5.1 %, respectively). Similarly, in the conduct domain, mostparents attributed poor performance to lack of effort from child (12.7 %) and childseeking negative attention (41.8 %). Once again, these differences were not affectedby parent’s gender, child’s gender, or child’s age group.

We conducted chi-square analyses to compare parents’ attributions of cause basedon the first cause of setback stated by the parent. Contrary to our hypothesis, we foundno evidence of parental hedonic bias. Parents were significantly more likely to attri-bute the cause of setbacks to internal /controllable reasons (χ2(1, N = 139) = 72.77,

p < 0.001inacademic;χ2(1, N = 127) = 33.95, p < 0.001 in conduct domain)instead of internal/uncontrollable, external/controllable, and external/ uncontrollablereasons.

3.4 Perceptions of cause and subsequent parental actions

For a detailed description of parental strategies, see Table 4. We found that many of the171 parental respondents offered multiple responses to the question that asked parentsto report techniques they used to increase their child’s academic performance. Withinthe 250 tactics offered by the parents, we found that parents most often reported the use

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Table 4 Strategies, punishments, or rewards offered in academic and conduct domains

Academic Conduct

N % N %

Reward 33 13.2 19 11.1

Offered money 12 4.8 3 1.8

Offered tangible items 9 3.6 6 3.5

Offered social gains 8 3.2 4 2.3

Other 4 1.6 6 3.5

Punishment 108 43.2 82 48.0

Took privileges away 71 28.4 52 30.4

Took social opportunity away 21 8.4 14 8.2

Took car access away 6 2.4 2 1.2

Grounded or physically punished 4 1.6 10 5.8

Took money away 4 1.6 0 0

Other punishment 2 0.8 4 2.3

Strategies 109 43.6 70 40.9

Increased direct parent attention 36 14.4 6 3.5

Talked with child 32 12.8 41 24.0

Obtained outside school help 16 6.4 2 1.2

Increased correspondence with school 14 5.6 12 7.0

Other strategies 6 2.4 9 5.3

Change school 5 2.0 0 0

Total 250 171

of strategies (43.6 %) followed by punishments (43.2 %) and finally rewards (13.2 %)to assist with child academic outcome. Parents were far more likely to report takingtangible items or privileges (e.g., TV, video or computer games) away than offeringthem as incentives (28.4 vs. 3.6 %). Similarly, parents were far more likely to reporttaking social opportunities and access to friends away (8.4 %) than offering socialgains such as time with friends (3.2 %). On the other hand, parents reported slightlymore instances of offering money or increasing child’s allowance (4.8 %) than takingmoney away or decreasing child’s allowance (1.6 %). Parental tactics in the conductdomain were similar to their reports for academic performance.

To investigate the relationship between perceptions of cause and subsequent actions,we narrowed our participant pool from the original 250 strategies parents offered toinclude those parents who only offered one tactic to circumvent their child’s setback(e.g., only rewards or only punishments). Parents who reported that the causes of pooracademic or poor conduct were controllable by the child significantly differed in theiractions from parents who reported that the causes were uncontrollable by the child(χ2(2, N = 39) = 8.03, p = 0.02 in academic; χ2(2, N = 98) = 12.05, p = 0.002in conduct domain). When parents perceived the cause of their child’s setback to becontrollable by the child, they were significantly more likely to punish than when the

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cause of behavior was perceived to be uncontrollable by the child (79.2 vs. 40.0 %in academic; 57.4 vs. 27.0 % in conduct). On the other hand, when parents perceivedthe cause of setbacks to be uncontrollable by the child, they were significantly morelikely to use strategies than when parents perceived the cause to be controllable (60.0vs. 16.7 % in academic; 73.0 vs. 37.7 % in conduct). The data for reward mirroredthe results for strategies, but the sample size was too small for statistical analyses.Although we did not find any statistically significant differences between parentalgender and disciplinary tactic, we did find that compared to girls, boys’ parents weremore likely to be punitive (91.9 vs. 82.6 %).

4 Discussion

The main purpose of this study was to fill the gap in the current literature regard-ing methods parents employ to improve their child’s academic performance as wellas school conduct. Guided by attribution theory, we investigated parents’ reports ofcause and reported disciplinary tactics to document potential relationships betweenparents’ verbal reports of cause of and their actions. Additionally, to address concernsregarding the use of hypothetical vignettes by attributional researchers, we exam-ined whether there were differences between parent groups which could bias researchresults. Namely, we compared parents who reported personal experience with theirchild facing setbacks and parents who did not report such experience.

We found various differences between these parent groups; the most prominentdifference was that parents who reported that their child exhibited setbacks weresignificantly more likely to report the use of punishment in both the academic andconduct domains. We also found that in the conduct domain parents who reportedprior experience with child setbacks were significantly more likely to attribute causeto the child’s lack of effort and child seeking negative attention. However, parents whodid not report child setbacks were more likely to attribute the cause of child setbacksto family problems or parental divorce. These results provide evidence for some of thecriticisms posed in the literature regarding the use of vignettes and have meaningfulimplications for researchers who use vignettes in applied research.

To control for the differences we found between the two parent groups, we nar-rowed our participant pool to include only those parents who reported child setbacks.We found that parents’ reactions to poor performance consisted mostly of punish-ments and strategies, with very few rewards. Our findings are in line with researchconducted by Straus and Stewart (1999) in which 94 % of parents report physical/cor-poral punishment by age 3–4 despite evidence suggesting adverse side effects andpossible escalation into physical abuse. The continuous use of punishment by parentsmay be due, in part, to the immediacy in which maladaptive behavior is suppressed bypunishment. Thus, despite parents’ knowledge of potential adverse long-term effectsof punishments, incorrect use of punishment, and the growing literature on the topic,parents may resort to punishment for immediacy. Furthermore, parents may fall backon methods that are familiar and that have been shaped by their own experiencesas children. Therefore, it is imperative for professionals, (e.g., child and parent edu-cators or practitioners) to work closely with parents and role-play specific parental

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disciplinary tactics that explicitly outline other effective but also immediate methodsparents can use in the face of setbacks.

In accordance with previous literature from Dix et al. (1989), parents in our studywere significantly more likely to report that they punished when they reported thecause of setbacks as controllable by the child, whereas parents reported offering morestrategies (e.g., increased parental attention, or increased correspondence with school)when they reported the cause of setbacks as uncontrollable by the child. Thus, parentsmay report more anger and use of punishments when they infer intent and knowledgeof wrongdoing, or see the setback as controllable by the child. On the other hand,parents may become less upset and respond by offering strategies when they viewthe setback as uncontrollable by the child. In our study, the majority of the parentsreported controllable causes for the child’s setbacks which correlated with the higherpercentage of punishments reported. While correlations do not imply causations, ourfindings suggest that if parents’ perceptions of child setbacks are changed to reflectless responsibility or controllability by the child, they may use punishments less.

There is documented evidence that interventions that change parents’ knowledgeof child behaviors are effective in reducing the use of punishments. Parents educatedregarding child and adolescent development, for example, punish less (see Golub et al.1987; Showers 1992). Another example is parent education that relies on principlesof learning and behavior. Teaching parents that children’s behaviors are not just underthe control of the child but rather, under the control of various environmental factorswhich the parents can manipulate and change is another effective method of reducingparental punishment. Such parent intervention consists of educating parents regard-ing environmental conditions that set the occasion for certain behaviors based on thechild’s learning history; current environmental conditions or consequential environ-mental events that increase, maintain, decrease, or extinguish behaviors; and objectivemethods of evaluating behavior. Our findings clearly suggest that there is a need formore explicit parent training that empowers parents and gives them effective tools toreplace punishments.

Our study is the first, to our knowledge, to document parents’ qualitative reportsof parental disciplinary tactics. We hoped that by categorizing and offering parents’actual descriptive responses, we would help future researchers increase the validity oftheir written scenarios, parental disciplinary tactics multiple-choice questionnaires, orLikert scales items. We found the most prevalent rewards parents offered were tangibleincentives and money; the most prevalent punishments were removing privileges suchas television or video games, or minimizing social opportunities and access to friends;and the most prevalent strategies were increasing direct parental attention and talkingwith their child usually about future outcomes of setbacks (e.g., joblessness).

Contrary to previous research conducted by Miller et al. (2002), we found parentsdid not exhibit hedonic biasing. The majority of parents attributed the causes of theirchild’s academic and/or conduct setbacks to the child (e.g., lack of effort) or to them-selves (e.g., parents’ own efforts, divorce or family problems) and not to others (e.g.,school or teachers). In fact, the most prevalent causes of setbacks parents reported wereinternal and controllable by the child (e.g., lack of effort). The implications of thesefindings are that the majority of parents do not perceive the educators as responsiblefor their child’s academic and conduct setbacks in school. This finding gives hope to

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child educators with the desire to collaborate with the parents on effective behaviorchange plans for the child.

This study contributes further evidence that reported parental perceptions of causeof events relate to parents’ self-reported disciplinary tactics. However, we had a num-ber of limitations including sampling method (i.e., use of convenience sampling),absence of children’s reports to corroborate parental reports, and reliance on a highlyused method in attributional research (i.e., self-reports). Although in our study parents’attributions did not differ as a function of their child’s age, results from longitudinalstudies have indicated that parents’ attributions may change across ages as the childmoves to different grade levels (Ryktonen et al. 2005). Thus, future researchers shouldinvestigate this further because our results were different from prior findings. A finallimitation was that the inter-rater agreement in the conduct domain for the locus andcontrollability dimensions was fair to moderate. Prior researchers have not separatedacademic versus conduct domains when examining attributional dimensions, and ourresults may be due to poor operational definitions and the lack of multiple exemplarsfor coders. Therefore, findings related to the conduct domain should be interpretedwith caution.

Despite noted limitations, there appears to be a clear relationship between perceivedcontrollable causes of child setbacks and punishment, or at least it is evident that such arelationship exists between parents’ reports of cause and reports of subsequent actions.Although the origins of the verbal act of relating events with causes have not beenexamined or specified in the literature, these verbal causal inferences correlate withparental disciplinary tactics and suggest that further investigation be carried out onparenting research. Lastly, despite parenting experts’ efforts to reduce the use of pun-ishment, in this study, parents reported high use of punishment tactics. These findingssuggest that parental behavior change efforts must also address parents’ attributions,or verbal explanations, of causes of events.

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Author Biographies

Marnie Shapiro is a clinical psychology graduate student completing her thesis at California State Uni-versity, Northridge. Her areas of interest include supervision and training of staff implementing behaviorchange plans, parental disciplinary tactics, and assessment and intervention for children who meet the diag-nostic criteria for Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Ellie Kazemi is an Associate Professor of Psychology and the Academic Director of the Behavioral Clini-cal Psychology graduate program at California State University, Northridge. Her research interests involvemethodological and conceptual issues in applied behavior analysis. Currently, she conducts translationalresearch and uses humanoid robots as simulated children to investigate variables that lead to improvementsin education, training, and supervision of parents, teachers, and behavioral staff.

Bernard Weiner is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles.His interests are in motivation and attribution theory.

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