Assessment of Perceived Parenting Behaviors: The Exposure to Abusive and Supportive Environments Parenting Inventory (EASE-PI)

Due to an awareness of the frequency of child abuse and lack of a single instrument to assess the extent of exposure to both the abusive and supportive environments provided by parents, a 70 item inventory (the EASE-PI) was developed that is a self-report on how both mother and father treated the respondent. A factor analysis, which was subsequently replicated, revealed three abusive factors (representing emotional, physical, and sexual abusiveness) and three supportive factors (love/support, promotion of independence, and positive modeling/fairness). The same factors emerged regardless of gender of respondent and gender of parent. The inventory provides a means to investigate the differential and interactive effects of exposure to emotional, physical, and sexual abusiveness and the possible mitigating effects of different types of supportive behaviors by each parent.     

Matching Judicial Supervision to Clients' Risk Status in Drug Court

This article reports outcomes from a program of experimental research evaluating the risk principle in drug courts. Prior studies revealed that participants who were high risk and had (a) antisocial personality disorder or (b) a prior history of drug abuse treatment performed better in drug court when scheduled to attend biweekly judicial status hearings in court. In contrast, participants who were low risk performed equivalently regardless of the court hearings schedule. This study prospectively matches drug court clients to the optimal schedule of court hearings based on an assessment of their risk status and compares outcomes to clients randomly assigned to the standard hearings schedule. Results confirmed that participants who were high risk and matched to biweekly hearings had better during-treatment outcomes than participants assigned to status hearings as usual. These findings provide confirmation of the risk principle in drug courts and yield practical information for enhancing the efficacy and cost-efficiency of drug courts.