Background on the PJI

PJI - BACKGROUND

The Parenting Judgement Indicator (PJI) is an online situational judgement test designed to help parents and carers reflect on how they make everyday family decisions with children — and how they balance participation and control in the normal hurly-burly of home life. It focuses on the 9–11 age range, where the tension between parental authority and a child’s growing need for autonomy and agency is often especially visible. 

Using a set of typical family situations, the PJI asks the respondent to consider four different approaches to handling each one: Directive (parent decides), Consultative (parent consults but decides), Participative (shared decision), and Delegative (children decide within clear boundaries). It then provides a Judgement score showing how well the person matched style to situation to achieve a balanced outcome. The intention is firmly developmental: to help the parent or carer notice repeating patterns, widen their options, and build a more flexible approach that respects parental authority while recognising children as meaningful stakeholders in family decision-making — without blame or pathologising. 

The PJI’s development was generously shaped by Professor Ian Butler (formerly University of Bath), and it was written by Michael Lock, child and educational psychologist, and Bob Wheeler, a senior HR practitioner/qualified barrister, with the scoring method developed by Dr Colin Cooper (formerly Queen’s University Belfast). Internal consistency analysis of PJI data reported a coefficient alpha of 0.77 - a strong result for a test of this type - suggesting that the items were sufficiently inter-related to provide reassuringly consistent information about parenting judgement. 

What it is not: it does not attempt to cover the full complexity of parenting (including other adult actors), and it does not address serious personal, social, or emotional difficulties outside the normal range.