title: Are discrepancies among child, mother, and father reports on children's behavior related to parents' psychological symptoms and aspects of parent-child relationships?
abstract: Examined whether parents' symptoms and qualitative and quantitative aspects of parent-child relationships make unique contributions to mothers' and fathers' reports of, and mother-child, father-child, and father-mother discrepancies on, children's behavior. Participants were 100 children, aged 10-12, and their mothers and fathers. Parents' symptoms and parent-child relationships made unique contributions to both parents' ratings of externalizing behavior. Although parent-child relationship variables were related to both parents' ratings of internalizing behavior, only parents' symptoms made unique contributions. On mother-child and father-child discrepancies, differences emerged between mother and father, and internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Both fathers' and mothers' symptoms contributed to father-mother discrepancies on both behavior types, with parent-child relationships contributing unique variance to discrepancies on internalizing behavior. Results highlight the importance of each informant's symptoms and relationship variables in understanding informant discrepancies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas 79409-2051, USA.
authors.forename: Christina M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Treutler
authors.forename: Catherine C
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Epkins
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D005219:Father-Child Relations; D005220:Fathers / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology*; D015588:Observer Variation; D016487:Parenting / Q000523:psychology; D010552:Personality Assessment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results