Distorted self-perceptions: divergent self-reports as statistical outliers in the multimethod assessment of children's social-emotional adjustment.
The influence of statistical outliers among older children's self-reports was investigated in the context of a multitrait-multimethod validation of the Weinberger Adjustment Inventory (Weinberger, 1991). Self, teacher, and peer ratings in 6th-grade classrooms (N = 155) provided evidence of the convergent and discriminant validity of distress (i.e., anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and low well-being) and self-restraint (i.e., impulse control, suppression of aggression, consideration of others, and responsibility) as superordinate dimensions of adjustment. However, a few children were statistical outliers whose self-reports starkly contradicted others' perceptions. These nonrepresentative cases notably affected the validity coefficients for the entire sample and seemed to identify children with potentially clinically significant distortions in their self-perceptions.
Weinberger
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DA
Department of Psychology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106-7123, USA.
D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D001007:Anxiety / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D003863:Depression / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015588:Observer Variation; D010469:Perceptual Distortion; D010552:Personality Assessment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012649:Self Concept; D012917:Social Adjustment; D012963:Sociometric Techniques