Relationships between Parental Attitudes and Behavior

Although parent education programs are based upon assumed linkages between attitudes and behavior, i.e., that attitudes held by parents have consequences for the way the parents act and interact with their children, empirical evidence to demonstrate such linkages is still lacking. In the present study the Parent Attitude Research instrument was administered to 26 mothers and 26 fathers, who also were observed in interaction with their adolescent sons, in an attempt to explore the relationship between the parents' attitudes and behavior. As in previous studies, the results were only partly successful in demonstrating a relationship between expressed attitudes and observed behavior. The need for further research in this area is basic to evaluating intervention programs and to increasing confidence in the sequence of effects which are assumed to result from programs designed to change parents' attitudes.