The mothers had not finished high school and had a mean income of $12,188 with small families of 2.25 children between 6.9 to 9.4 years old. To assess the construct validity of the CAP, the hypothesis was generated that parent responses to the parent-child situations would be more controlling, punishing, aroused, and negative with increasing CAP scores. The presence of child abuse risk factors including biological, psychological, and social or interactional risks, was also assessed as additional confirmation of abuse status and as a set of factors traditionally used to predict abusive behaviors. The results indicated that as CAP scores increased, parental responses increased in level of control, punitiveness, arousal, and rejection of the child. No significant relationship between affect and CAP was found. In addition, a positive relationship was found between CAP scores and total number of risk factors reported by participants. Multiple regression analyses showed that CAP scores alone were more effective predictors of parent verbal behaviors than child abuse risk factors. The results of this study generally confirmed the hypothesis and presented an advance over previous construct validity studies in its use of an adult abusive sample and independent ratings of parent verbal responses. 3 tables, 1 note, and 57 references (Author abstract modified)