13.2 PARENTAL ALIENATION RESEARCH: OLD PROBLEMS AND PROPOSED NEW DIRECTIONS

Abstract

Existing research on parental alienation (PA) is at a low level of evidence and has failed to consider adverse treatment events but is commonly presented as valid and reliable. Problems of existing work and proposals for new research directions are presented. Most phenomena of childhood and adolescence have been studied initially from a descriptive, “natural history” case perspective, and this has been followed by systematic comparisons of larger population samples with naturally occurring differences. This approach was fruitful in the case of attachment, for example. Examination of published work shows that the study of PA has not followed that route but began when Richard Gardner (1985) abstracted features from a number of cases he had worked with although he did not publish any thorough case studies. Later proponents of PA reported some studies with before-and-after comparisons and comparisons to roughly matched groups, but neither have provided complete case reports nor carried out high-level comparison studies. In addition, a number of studies misuse Likert-type scales, creating possible errors in results. Many studies rely on correlational methods that avoid the issue of causality. All research on the topic suffers from the absence of an established protocol for differentially identifying PA. It thus remains unknown how PA cases develop longitudinally and what outcomes are likely either with or without treatment. This point deserves stressing because of reports that children have been harmed by some treatments. Work toward an understanding of PA phenomena would require some complete case studies, outlining how each case was identified and how causes of estrangement were ruled out, the type of treatment that was done (if any), and the progress over some years of individual development and of relationships with parents. Such information would be a rich source of testable hypotheses about PA, which are presently minimal due to theoretical weaknesses and a lack of empirical foundations. The development of such hypotheses would permit design and implementation of research at high levels of evidence.