Christina M. Rodriguez

Interests: Child clinical psychology primarily interested in abusive and dysfunctional parenting, child emotional well-being, and their interaction. I have concentrated my current research program on understanding factors that exacerbate parental risk for physical abuse, particularly psychological distress and cognitive processes that increase the likelihood that a parent will transition from using physical discipline to harsher and ultimately abusive discipline. Most recently, I have focused on identifying innovative assessment strategies that would permit greater confidence in our abuse risk assessments. I have also considered how such parental disciplinary behaviors and abuse risk are associated with children’s internalizing difficulties, such as the development of depressive and anxious symptomatology, paying particular attention to potential cognitive mechanisms that can be transmitted intergenerationally.

There are 27 included publications by Christina M. Rodriguez :

TitleDateViewsBrief Description
Assessing abuse risk beyond self-report: Analog task of acceptability of parent-child aggression. 2011 2461 Objectives The present investigation reports on the development and initial validation of a new analog task, the Parent-Child Aggression Acceptability Movie Task (P-CAAM), intended to assess respondents’ acceptance of parent-child aggression, includ...
Assessment of behavioral distress and depression in a pediatric population 1998 4770 Using a multitrait—multimethod approach, measures designed to assess emotional distress in medical populations were compared with depression measures standardized on healthy children. In a hospitalized sample of children ages 4 to 12 years old, paren...
Association between Independent Reports of Maternal Parenting Stress and Children’s Internalizing Symptomatology. 2011 2977 Although considerable research has investigated parenting stress and children’s externalizing behavior problems, comparatively less has considered parenting stress in relation to children’s internalizing difficulties. Even less research on parenting ...
Attributional style as a mediator between parental abuse risk and child internalizing symptomatology 2006 3380 This study examined a model wherein children’s attributional style mediates the relationship between parental physical child-abuse risk and children’s internalizing problems. Using structural equation modeling, three indices of abuse risk were select...
Attributions and discipline history as predictors of child abuse potential and future discipline practices 2004 3500 Objectives: We attempted to identify factors that can be applied in primary and secondary prevention programs and expand the understanding of why those who were not abused may engage in abusive behavior. The purpose of this research was to explore h...
Behavioral Upset in Medical Patients--Revised: Evaluation of a parent report measure of distress for pediatric populations 1994 2860 Examined the utility of a new parent-report measure designed specifically for pediatric inpatients, the Behavioral Upset in Medical Patients-Revised (BUMP-R). The BUMP-R was administered to 151 mothers of hospitalized children ages 4-12 years the day...
Behind the Cycle of Violence, Beyond Abuse History: A Brief Report on the Association of Parental Attachment to Physical Child Abuse Potential. 2011 6481 Although the concept of a cycle of violence presumes that the transmission of violence is expressed directly across generations, the role of the overall quality of the parent-child relationship may ultimately be more influential in later parenting be...
Cognitive-affective predictors of women’s readiness to end domestic violence relationships 2006 7414 A model of women’s readiness to terminate an abusive relationship was examined, using cognitive and emotional factors to predict readiness to change as conceptualized in the transtheoretical model. Factors previously identified in the domestic violen...
Coping style as a mediator between pregnancy desire and child abuse potential: a brief report 2009 3312 Women with unwanted pregnancies may be at elevated child abuse risk, although ineffective coping styles are associated with both child abuse potential and unwanted pregnancy. The present study investigated whether coping style mediated the associatio...
Depression, anxiety, and attributional style in learning disabled and non-learning disabled children 1989 5653 Investigated depression, anxiety, and attributional style in learning-disabled (LD) and non-LD children. Subjects included 11 children who were new to an LD class, 20 who had been in LD classes for more than 1 year, and a control group of 31 non-spec...
Disciplinary style and child abuse: Association with indicators of positive functioning in children with behavior problems 2008 1594 Reduction of ineffective parenting is promoted in parent training components of mental health treatment for children with externalizing behavior disorders, but minimal research has considered whether disciplinary style and lower abuse risk could also...
Ecological predictors of parenting style and child abuse potential in a Hispanic and Anglo-American sample 2008 3796 Recent attention to multicultural issues has sparked recognition that parenting is also a culturally construed phenomenon. The present study involved a diverse sample of 90 Anglo-American and Hispanic parents examining predictors based on distal/prox...
Emotional functioning, attachment style, and attributions as predictors of child abuse potential in domestic violence victims 2006 7255 To explore cognitive and emotional factors that may exacerbate child-abuse potential among domestic violence victims, 80 participants reported on their depression, hopelessness, anxiety, and anger as well as their attachment style and attributional s...
Mothers of children with externalizing behavior problems: Cognitive risk factors for abuse potential and discipline style and practices 2008 13707 Objective Utilizing the conceptual framework of the Social Information Processing (SIP) model ([Milner, 1993] and [Milner, 2000]), associations between cognitive risk factors and child physical abuse risk and maladaptive discipline style and practic...
Parent-child aggression: Association with child abuse potential and parenting styles. 2010 11301 The present investigation predicted that greater use of corporal punishment as well as physical maltreatment would be associated with child abuse potential and selected parenting styles. Three independent studies were examined, two with community sam...
Parental discipline and abuse potential effects on child depression, anxiety, and attributions 2003 22813 The current study investigated differences in children’s emotional functioning as a product of their parents’ reported disciplinary practices and child abuse potential. Families with no known history of abuse were recruited to ascertain whether depre...
Parenting stress and abuse potential in mothers of children with developmental disabilities 1997 9117 Most research on parenting stress and abuse factors in parents of children with developmental disabilities has relied almost exclusively on Caucasian, middle-income, intact families. The current study investigated the generalizability of previous fin...
Parenting stress and anger expression as predictors of child abuse potential 1997 9117 To explore one potential pathway to physical child abuse, the present investigation used hierarchical regression analysis using measures of parenting stress and anger expression to jointly predict child abuse potential. The Parenting Stress Index, St...
Physical Discipline, Escalation, and Child Abuse Potential: Psychometric Evidence for the Analog Parenting Task 2010 2932 Data from three studies provide new evidence to support the validity of the Analog Parenting Task (APT) as an instrument to assess risk for harsh, physically aggressive parenting. In this series of studies, there was a strong association between APT...
Predictors of parents’ physical disciplinary practices 1999 3276 Objective: This study examined how childhood history of discipline (1) related to ratings of how severe and typical punishments were; and (2) predicted parents’ use of discipline techniques. The influence of child culpability on these ratings was als...
Professionals’ attitudes and accuracy on child abuse reporting decisions in New Zealand 2002 4207 Without mandatory child abuse reporting laws in New Zealand, professionals’ decisions to contact child protective services must often reflect subjective and situational factors. This study examined abuse reporting decisions of 255 New Zealand health,...
Reading between the lines: Implicit assessment of the association of parental attributions and empathy with abuse risk. 2012 2358 Objective Researchers in the child maltreatment field have traditionally relied on explicit self-reports to study factors that may exacerbate physical child abuse risk. The current investigation evaluated an implicit analog task utilizing eye tracki...
Relationships between maternal parenting stress and child disruptive behavior 1992 7611 This study examined statistically the differential relationships among child domain and parent domain scores of the Parenting Stress Index (PSI) and child disruptive behaviors as measured by the problem and intensity scales of the Eyberg Child Behavi...
A skillful guide through the field of depression in children [Review of the book Handbook of depression in children and adolescents] 1996 737 Review of the book Handbook of depression in children and adolescents
Stress and anger as contextual factors and pre-existing cognitive schemas: Predicting parental child maltreatment risk 2007 4693 Progress in the child maltreatment field depends on refinements in leading models. This study examines aspects of social information processing theory (Milner, 2000) in predicting physical maltreatment risk in a community sample. Consistent with this...
University faculty attitudes on Affirmative Action principles toward faculty and students 2006 5306 Despite its relatively short history, policies connected with Affirmative Action have endured a controversial social, political, and legal past. Higher education has witnessed much of this controversy firsthand. Because the venue of many Affirmative ...
Who spares the rod? Religious orientation, social conformity, and child abuse potential. 2010 3626 Objective Relatively little research has investigated the connection between religiosity and physical child abuse risk. Certain aspects, such as specific religious orientation or beliefs, and cognitive schema, such as socially conformist beliefs, ma...