Theoretical review on Parental Alienation and comparison of knowledge among psychologists and Psychology students

• Grant number: 17/00685-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: July 01, 2017
• End date: April 30, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology
• Agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal Investigator: Lúcia Cavalcanti de Albuquerque Williams
• Grantee: Viviane Dutra Gama
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The terms Parental Alienation (PA) and Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) have become familiar to the Brazilian judicial system since approval of the "Parental Alienation" law. However, the law was enacted without much discussion on academic circles, which is challenging to forensic psychologists. Even after the law's approval, limited progress has occurred in this area. Thus, the current project has two objectives: 1) to conduct a conceptual review on the PAS and PA literature; and 2) to compare and contrast knowledge about the PA concept from psychologists and Psychology students. For the review, publications from the last fifteen years will be searched in PsychINFO, Web of Science, LILACS, MEDLINE, PubMed and Willey database considering the country of origin, type of study, the definition adopted by the authors for the PA and PAS concepts, their position concerning PAS and analysis of main response classes emitted by the parents and described as necessary on PA case identification. For the second study, comparing professionals and students' knowledge, data previously gathered on a survey with 137 forensic psychologists answering the Family Court Survey (FCS) will be analyzed. In addition, a new survey with 150 psychology students will be conducted using an adapted online version of the FCS. The answers will be analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics assessing potential differences between groups. (AU)