title: Agreement between children and parents demonstrated that illness-related absenteeism was validly reported by children.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To examine the agreement between children's and parents' reporting of illness-related absenteeism from school and to examine predictors for disagreement between children and parents.
  
  
  METHODS
  A total of 8,438 schoolchildren aged from 5 to 15 years (grade 0-8) and one parent of each child were invited to participate in the Hi Five baseline study. The response rate for children answering a questionnaire was 89% (n = 7,525), and 36% of the parents (n = 3,008) participated in a weekly illness registration study using text messages (short message service) over a period of 22 weeks. Text messages and questionnaire data were linked at the individual level, leaving 2,269 child-parent pairs in the analysis, corresponding to 27% of the eligible sample.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The agreement between children's and parents' reports of illness-related absenteeism was good, with high absolute agreement and slight to moderate Ƙ values. Agreement was lowest for 6- to 8-year-olds and highest for 11- to 12-year-olds. Children's reports of illness symptoms and parents' reports of their children's illnesses in the preceding week were strong predictors for children reporting illness-related absenteeism when parents did not.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Illness-related absenteeism can be reported by children, and children report higher prevalence of illness-related absenteeism than parents.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Intervention Research in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Øster Farimagsgade 5 A, Copenhagen K DK-1353, Denmark. Electronic address: amch@sdu.dk.
authors.forename: Anne Maj
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Denbæk
authors.affiliation: Centre for Intervention Research in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Øster Farimagsgade 5 A, Copenhagen K DK-1353, Denmark.
authors.forename: Camilla Thørring
authors.initials: CT
authors.lastname: Bonnesen
authors.affiliation: Centre for Intervention Research in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Øster Farimagsgade 5 A, Copenhagen K DK-1353, Denmark.
authors.forename: Anette
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Andersen
authors.affiliation: Centre for Intervention Research in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Øster Farimagsgade 5 A, Copenhagen K DK-1353, Denmark.
authors.forename: Bjørn Evald
authors.initials: BE
authors.lastname: Holstein
authors.affiliation: Centre for Intervention Research in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Øster Farimagsgade 5 A, Copenhagen K DK-1353, Denmark.
authors.forename: Bjarne
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Laursen
authors.affiliation: Centre for Intervention Research in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Øster Farimagsgade 5 A, Copenhagen K DK-1353, Denmark.
authors.forename: Pernille
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Due
authors.affiliation: Centre for Intervention Research in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Øster Farimagsgade 5 A, Copenhagen K DK-1353, Denmark.
authors.forename: Anette
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Johansen
mesh_terms: D000041:Absenteeism; D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D057566:Self Report
keywords: Agreement; Child report; Illness-related absenteeism; School survey; Schoolchild; Validity