Multi-Informant Assessments of Adolescent Social Anxiety: Adding Clarity by Leveraging Reports from Unfamiliar Peer Confederates

Convergent, incremental, and criterion‐related validity of multi‐informant assessments of adolescents' fears of negative and positive evaluation

“…Our sample's demographic figures are consistent with economic and ethnic data for the geographic area of recruitment (U.S. Census Bureau, ). Further, our use of a demographically diverse sample to address aims regarding the psychometric properties of mental health assessments is in keeping with prior work and use of diverse samples to examine multimodal assessments of a host of domains including social anxiety (Beidel et al, ; Deros et al, ; Lipton et al, ; Thomas et al, ), depressive symptoms (e.g., De Los Reyes et al, ; Rausch et al, ), and family functioning (Augenstein et al, ; De Los Reyes, Salas, Menzer, & Daruwala, ).…”

“…First, the unfamiliar peer confederates involved in our social interaction tasks consisted of research personnel trained to simulate same‐age unfamiliar peers. We previously cited work taking a similar approach (Anderson & Hope, ; Deros et al, ; Rausch et al, ). Further, we limited personnel assuming this role to those who appeared youthful and thus could reasonably appear to our participants as unfamiliar same‐age peers (e.g., use of age‐appropriate casual clothing; the absence of facial hair for male confederates).…”

“…Consistent with prior work (Anderson & Hope, ; Deros et al, ; Rausch et al, ), we trained undergraduate/postbaccalaureate research assistants to interact with adolescent participants as “unfamiliar” peer confederates within the tasks we describe below. We selected assistants who appeared youthful in order to mimic interactions with same‐age adolescent peers (e.g., for male confederates, the absence of facial hair).…”

“…Ethnic/racial demographic rates total above 100% because parents could select multiple response options. As in prior work (e.g., Augenstein et al, ; De Los Reyes et al, ; De Los Reyes, Augenstein, Aldao, et al, Deros et al, ; Rausch et al, ; Thomas et al, ), parents provided data about weekly family income using a survey that included response options on a 10‐point Likert‐type scale in $100 increments (e.g., $101–$200 per week). On this scale, parents reported that 29 of the families earned $500 or less per week, 23 earned between $501 and $900 per week, and 44 earned more than $901 in income per week (“$901 + per week” was the sample's modal response).…”

Discrepancies Between Adolescent and Parent Reports About Family Relationships

“…Stated another way, young children vary considerably in whether they display disruptive behavior in home and nonhome contexts (or both), so parents’ and teachers’ reports of such behavior may vary, in part, because these informants differ in their opportunities for observing displays of disruptive behavior within and across contexts. Furthermore, links between patterns of multiple informants’ mental health reports and contextual changes in displays of mental health problems also manifest across assessments of varied domains of mental health in children, adolescents, and adults (e.g., aggressive behavior, autism spectrum disorders, social anxiety; De Los Reyes, Alfano, Lau, Augenstein, & Borelli, ; De Los Reyes, Bunnell, & Beidel, ; Deros et al., ; Glenn et al., ; Hartley, Zakriski, & Wright, ; Lerner, De Los Reyes, Drabick, Gerber, & Gadow, ). Thus, research on mental health supports using patterns of multi‐informant reports to characterize context‐specific (and cross‐contextual) displays of psychological phenomena.…”