Determining at What Age Children Provide Sound Self-Reports: An Illustration of the Validity-Index Approach

Abstract

In psychological assessment of children, it is pivotal to establish from what age on self-reports can complement or replace informant reports. We introduce a psychometric approach to estimate the minimum age for a child to produce self-report data that is of similar quality as informant data. The approach makes use of statistical validity indicators such as person-fit and long-string indices, and can be readily applied to data commonly collected in psychometric studies of child measures. We evaluate and illustrate the approach, using self-report and informant-report data of the PedsQL, a pediatric health-related quality of life measure, from 651 child–mother pairs. To evaluate the approach, we tested various hypotheses about the validity of the self-report data, using the [Formula: see text] person-fit index as the validity indicator and the mother informant-data as a benchmark for validity. Results showed that [Formula: see text] discriminated between self-reports of younger and older children, between self-reports of children that completed the PedsQL alone or with a parent, and between self-reports and informant reports. We conclude that the validity-index approach has good potential for future applications. Future research should further evaluate the approach for different types of questionnaires (e.g., personality inventories) and using different validity indices (e.g., response-bias indices).

An Item Response Modeling Approach to Cognitive Load Measurement

“…As we have shown in this study, IRT modeling can provide an objective measure of intrinsic cognitive load outside of subjective self-report. This is particularly pertinent given the difficulty in attaining reliable self-report measures on cognitive processing of younger children (i.e., less than 7 years) (Conjin et al, 2020). The ability to ascertain reliable and valid measures of intrinsic cognitive load through a performance-based objective mathematical procedure is highly beneficial, especially for cognitive load researchers interested in measuring younger learners' cognitive load.…”

Patient-Reported Outcome Measures and Clinical Outcomes in Children with Foregut Anomalies

“…Second, school-aged children with congenital anomalies tend to overestimate their performance, a phenomenon known as superiority bias [ 26 ]. However, despite the disparity between actual competence and self-reported competence, eight-year-olds have been found to be able to provide valid and reliable self-reports [ 27 ].…”

Sex differences in children's health status as measured by the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL)™: cross-sectional findings from a large school-based sample in the Netherlands

“…Based on our own experience within the infrastructure of a longitudinal follow-up program for children with congenital anatomical anomalies we decided to refrain from using the self-reports for 5–7 years. Our decision is justified by the recent publication of Conijn and coworkers [ 39 ]. Third, fathers were underrepresented, as more than 80% of proxy-reports were filled out by mothers.…”