Can We Use Convergence Between Caregiver Reports of Adolescent Mental Health to Index Severity of Adolescent Mental Health Concerns?

Abstract

Clinical assessments of adolescent mental health often incorporate the perspectives of multiple caregivers (e.g., mothers and fathers). Caregiver reports tend to exhibit relatively high levels of correspondence versus other informant pairs such as caregivers and teachers. Yet, caregiver reports are not redundant with one another. Thus, researchers often apply strategies for integrating caregiver reports (e.g., composite score), assuming that greater convergence between caregivers on reports of high adolescent mental health concerns points to greater severity in such concerns. To our knowledge, this assumption has never been directly tested. We examined patterns of convergence and divergence between caregiver reports of adolescent mental health in a sample of 519 families from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Caregivers and adolescents completed reports of adolescent mental health, and independent coders rated levels of adolescent hostility displayed in separate caregiver-adolescent interactions (e.g., mother-adolescent vs. father-adolescent). We identified caregiver dyads that converged in their reports of relatively high levels of adolescent mental health concerns, as well as dyads that diverged in reports of such concerns. Relative to adolescents whose caregivers diverged in their reports of adolescent mental health, those adolescents with caregivers who converged on reports of relatively high adolescent mental health concerns both self-reported high levels of mental health concerns, and displayed greater levels of hostility within caregiver-adolescent interactions. Our findings have important implications for using convergence between caregiver reports of adolescent mental health concerns as an indicator of the severity of such concerns.

Agreement in Youth–Parent Perceptions of Parenting Behaviors: A Case for Testing Measurement Invariance in Reporter Discrepancy Research

“…Moreover, there is a need to demonstrate measurement invariance when informant discrepancies are used as predictors. For example, a growing body of research uses differences in informant reports to predict mental health issues such as disruptive behavior ) and social anxiety (De Los Reyes et al 2013a), as well as global severity of mental health concerns (De Los Reyes et al 2016). By definition, invariant measures provide a more accurate picture of true differences across informants, and as a result, these differences should be more reliable predictors of a hypothetical outcome.…”

Introduction to the Special Issue: Discrepancies in Adolescent–Parent Perceptions of the Family and Adolescent Adjustment

“…As mentioned previously, prior work points to substantial dyad-level variations in magnitudes of convergence, including informant dyads who converge quite highly in reports of psychological phenomena (e.g., De Los Reyes et al 2009, 2013a, 2016aLippold et al 2011Lippold et al , 2013Lippold et al , 2014. What might convergence between these reports reflect?…”

“…For example, in adolescent mental health assessments, we have found that when two parents (i.e., informants who observe adolescents in the same context) converge on reports of relatively high adolescent mental health concerns, the adolescent both displays greater hostility within observed family interactions, and self-reports greater mental health concerns, relative to adolescents whose parents do not converge in their reports about adolescent mental health (De Los Reyes et al 2016a). Consistent with this work in mental health, in recent developmental work, adolescentparent dyads that converge on relatively low levels of parental knowledge have adolescents who are at particularly high risk for developing substance use (e.g., Lippold et al 2013Lippold et al , 2014.…”

“…Other approaches possess similar capabilities and have been successfully implemented in the study of informant discrepancies. These include metaanalysis of cross-informant correspondence (e.g., Achenbach et al 1987;De Los Reyes et al 2015b), direct assessment of discrepant views (i.e., via structured interview: De Los Reyes et al 2012, 2013d, nested repeated measures analytic models (e.g., generalized estimating equations; Alfano et al 2015;Augenstein et al 2016;De Los Reyes et al 2013b); and person-centered models (e.g., latent class analysis; De Los Reyes et al 2009, 2011, 2016a, 2013aLippold et al 2011Lippold et al , 2013Lippold et al , 2014. In line with this recent work, a key aim of this Special Issue is to report recent work on discrepancies between adolescents' and parents' reports of family functioning, using these emerging measurement and analytic models.…”

“…Diverging Operations: When Divergence between Adolescents' and Parents' Reports Reflects Adaptive Family Processes Among the substantial dyad-level variations in patterns of informants' reports (e.g., De Los Reyes et al 2009, 2013a, 2016aLippold et al 2011Lippold et al , 2013Lippold et al , 2014, adolescents and parents might diverge quite highly in reports of family functioning. What might this divergence reflect?…”