In relation to the ecological-systemic model of child maltreatment, the CAP assesses individual, familial, and social factors that facilitate the occurrence of physical child abuse. Depression and marital adjustment were measured in three groups of mothers: mother-perpetrators of physical child abuse (20), mothers with a rate superior to cut-off in the CAP Inventory (15), and mothers with low punctuation in the CAP Inventory (15). The last two groups came from a larger sample of 829 subjects who were a demographically representative sample of the population of Pais Vasco, Spain. Because of variations in the detection of social services, the physically abused group was formed by the most extreme and severe cases. The three groups of mothers were matched on socioeconomic family status, education, civil status, age of the mother, sex of the child, and number of children. On the variables of depression and marital adjustment, it was anticipated by the researchers that the group with physical abuse would resemble the high CAP group and that both groups would be significantly different from the low CAP group. Results partially confirm these hypotheses; thus, the potential for the development of a Spanish version of the CAP Inventory is supported. Four tables, 21 references, and a summary in English