Parent–Adolescent Cross-Informant Agreement in Clinically Referred Samples: Findings From Seven Societies

Abstract

To conduct international comparisons of parent-adolescent cross-informant agreement in clinical samples, we analyzed ratings on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and Youth Self-Report (YSR) for 6,762 clinically referred adolescents ages 11-18 from 7 societies (M = 14.5 years, SD = 2.0 years; 51% boys). Using CBCL and YSR data, we asked the following questions: (a) Do parents report more problems for their adolescent children than the adolescents report about themselves? (b) How do cross-informant correlations (rs) for scale scores differ by problem type and by society? (c) How well do parents and adolescents, on average, agree regarding which problems they rate as low, medium, or high? (d) How does within-dyad item agreement vary within and between societies? (e) How do societies vary in dichotomous cross-informant agreement with respect to the deviance status of the adolescents? CBCL and YSR scores were quite similar, with small and inconsistent informant effects across societies. Cross-informant rs averaged .47 across scales and societies. On average, parents and adolescents agreed well regarding which problem items received low, medium, or high ratings (M r = .87). Mean within-dyad item agreement was moderate across all societies, but dyadic agreement varied widely within every society. In most societies, adolescent noncorroboration of parent-reported deviance was more common than parental noncorroboration of adolescent-reported deviance. Overall, somewhat better parent-adolescent agreement and more consistency in agreement patterns across diverse societies were found in these seven clinical samples than in population samples studied using the same methods.

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Parent–Adolescent Discrepancies: Existing Findings and Future Directions

“…As would be expected, mean CBCL and YSR scores were much higher in these clinical samples than in the population samples (e.g., Total Problems scores means of 50.2 for the CBCL and 53.7 for the YSR, compared to 21.4 and 34.6, respectively, for the 25 population samples). Rescorla, Ewing et al (2016) reported mean parentadolescent cross-informant rs of .41 for Total Problems and .47 for Internalizing, very similar to those Rescorla et al (2013) found for population samples (both .45). However, the mean r for Externalizing of .55 was larger than that reported for population samples (.46).…”

“…An important pattern noted in some clinical samples is that when adolescents' ratings yielded clinically elevated scores, most parents were in agreement, but when adolescents' ratings did not yield clinically elevated scores, less than half of parents were in agreement (e.g., Martin et al 2004). Rescorla, Ewing et al (2016) used CBCL and YSR data for 6,762 clinically referred adolescents ages 11-18 from seven different societies in order to conduct systematic cross-cultural comparisons of parent-adolescent agreement in clinical samples parallel to those reported by Rescorla et al (2013) for population samples. Although mean YSR scores in population samples were higher than mean CBCL scores for all problem scales in almost all societies, mean differences between the YSR and CBCL in these seven clinical samples were small, often non-significant, and inconsistent in direction.…”

“…Cross-informant rs varied less across societies in the seven clinical samples (.42-.55) than in the 25 population samples (.17-.58). This may be because Rescorla, Ewing et al (2016) included only seven societies, six of which were Euro-American, whereas Rescorla et al (2013) included 25 societies (14 Euro-American, 3 Asian, 2 North African, 2 Caribbean, 2 South American, and 2 Middle Eastern). Rescorla, Ewing et al (2016) also suggested that societal factors may play less of a role in degree of parentadolescent agreement in clinical samples than in population samples, but clinical samples from more societies and a larger diversity of cultures are needed to test this hypothesis.…”

“…This may be because Rescorla, Ewing et al (2016) included only seven societies, six of which were Euro-American, whereas Rescorla et al (2013) included 25 societies (14 Euro-American, 3 Asian, 2 North African, 2 Caribbean, 2 South American, and 2 Middle Eastern). Rescorla, Ewing et al (2016) also suggested that societal factors may play less of a role in degree of parentadolescent agreement in clinical samples than in population samples, but clinical samples from more societies and a larger diversity of cultures are needed to test this hypothesis. Rescorla, Ewing et al (2016) found large correlations across all societies for the mean item Q correlations (M = .87), consistent with the Rescorla et al (2013) results for 25 population samples (M = .85).…”

“…Rescorla, Ewing et al (2016) also suggested that societal factors may play less of a role in degree of parentadolescent agreement in clinical samples than in population samples, but clinical samples from more societies and a larger diversity of cultures are needed to test this hypothesis. Rescorla, Ewing et al (2016) found large correlations across all societies for the mean item Q correlations (M = .87), consistent with the Rescorla et al (2013) results for 25 population samples (M = .85). This suggests that there is strong agreement, on average, between parents and adolescents in both population and clinical samples regarding problems given low, medium, or high ratings.…”