Cross-Informant Ratings of Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior in Adolescent–Parent Pairs in Six Countries. Does Being Adopted Make a Difference?

Abstract

Low agreement between self report and parent report on the behavioral adjustment of adolescents has been widely documented in the literature. However, it has been little studied in connection with adoptees. In the current research, the magnitude of agreement between adolescents and their parents' reports of adolescents' behavioral problems and the direction of the possible discrepancies between these reports are studied. A comparison is made between adopted and non-adopted adolescent-parent dyads. The research questions are tested in a study with a sample size of 784 adolescent-parent pairs (309 adopted and 475 control adolescents) from Belgium, Romania, Chili, Switzerland, Italy, and the Netherlands. Because of an imbalance in the number of adopted and control adolescents per country, a more balanced dataset of 189 adoptees and 104 controls was used in the central analyses. Results showed that both the magnitude of agreement and the direction of the discrepancies in internalizing and externalizing behavioral ratings between informants, i.e. parents and their adolescent, does not depend on the adolescent's status, i.e. adopted or non-adopted. Compared to their parents, both adopted and control adolescents reported problems more frequently.Slight variations in the magnitude of agreement were found between countries. An interaction effect between gender and informant indicated that discrepancies for internalizing behavior were higher in parent-adolescent daughter than in parent-adolescent son pairs.

Adverse Childhood Experiences of Children Adopted from Care: The Importance of Adoptive Parental Warmth for Future Child Adjustment

“…The present study was limited to the use of parent reports of child internalising symptoms and externalising problems due to the young age of the children when placed for adoption, which precluded using teacher or child reports of difficulties. Whilst it has been suggested that adoptive parents may pay greater attention to their children’s adjustment than birth parents [17], a recent study refuted this [87]. However, we speculate that adoptive parents may be less able to accurately report on their child’s externalising problems and internalising symptoms early on in the child’s placement as parents are likely to be getting to know their children; this may account for the lack of association detected between ACEs and children’s externalising problems.…”

Emotional Awareness Moderates the Association Between Discrimination and Emotional-Behavioral Problems: A Cross-Informant Study in Chinese Rural-to-Urban Migrant Youth

“…In the Chinese context, studies have shown that children and adolescents’ self-reported psychological distress scores were higher than those reported by their parents and teachers, indicating that adolescents tend to overestimate their own socioemotional problems (Roskam et al, 2017; Tepper et al, 2008). Of note, during early adolescence Chinese students are intensely involved in school assignments and activities, and teachers have more opportunities to observe their behavioral adjustment (Lan, Scrimin, & Moscardino, 2019).…”

“…First, we aimed to investigate the association between perceived status-based discrimination and emotional-behavioral problems among Chinese rural-to-urban migrants in early adolescence from a cross-informant perspective involving both self-reports and teacher-reports of youth’s outcomes. Based on the literature reviewed above, we anticipated that higher levels of status-based discrimination would be associated with more emotional-behavioral problems, and that these associations would be stronger for self-reported than for teacher-reported outcomes due to adolescents’ tendency to overestimate their psychological difficulties (Roskam et al, 2017; Tepper et al, 2008).…”

Does Bullying Occur behind Closed Doors? Agreement of Bullying Reports between Parents and Children and Its Differential Associations with Child Outcomes

“…In a meta-analysis of 119 studies, a weak mean correlation was found between child- and parent-reports of overall emotional and behavioral problems in children and adolescents [ 30 ]. More recent work has confirmed these findings, similarly reporting low to moderate agreement across parent- and child-reports of child adjustment in both community [ 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 ] and clinical samples [ 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 ]. Interestingly, there is some research suggesting that parents may be better at reporting child externalizing problems, while children’s self-reports may reflect their own internalizing problems more accurately [ 33 , 38 , 39 , 40 ].…”