Applying the definition to real world parents
How can you tell if you are an authoritative parent?
When researchers want to identify an individual’s parenting style, they sometimes observe how parents and kids get along in the real world. For instance, in one study researchers assigned parents and kids a puzzle task, and recorded the way parents interacted with their children (Dekovic and Jannsens 1992).
More often, however, researchers rely questionnaires. These questionnaires present a parent (or child) with a series of statements. The respondent is asked to rate his or her agreement with each statement on a four-point scale (1= “almost never true", 4 = “almost always true").