title: 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.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , Bryn Mawr College.
authors.forename: Leslie A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Rescorla
authors.affiliation: b Department of Psychiatry , University of Pennsylvania.
authors.forename: Grace
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Ewing
authors.affiliation: c Department of Psychiatry , University of Vermont.
authors.forename: Masha Y
authors.initials: MY
authors.lastname: Ivanova
authors.affiliation: d University Clinic for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry , University of Zürich.|e University Hospital of Psychiatry Clinic for Forensic Psychiatry.
authors.forename: Marcel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Aebi
authors.affiliation: f Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry , University of Southern Denmark.
authors.forename: Niels
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Bilenberg
authors.affiliation: g Erasmus University Medical Center-Sophia Children's Hospital.
authors.forename: Gwen C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Dieleman
authors.affiliation: h Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy , Köln University.
authors.forename: Manfred
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Döpfner
authors.affiliation: i Department of Psychology , Mykolas Romeris University.
authors.forename: Ilona
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kajokiene
authors.affiliation: j Department of Psychology , Chinese University of Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Patrick W L
authors.initials: PW
authors.lastname: Leung
authors.affiliation: h Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy , Köln University.
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Plück
authors.affiliation: d University Clinic for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry , University of Zürich.|k Aalborg University Hospital, University of Basel.
authors.forename: Hans-Christoph
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Steinhausen
authors.affiliation: d University Clinic for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry , University of Zürich.
authors.forename: Christa
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Winkler Metzke
authors.affiliation: i Department of Psychology , Mykolas Romeris University.
authors.forename: Rita
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zukauskiene
authors.affiliation: g Erasmus University Medical Center-Sophia Children's Hospital.
authors.forename: Frank C
authors.initials: FC
authors.lastname: Verhulst
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D016487:Parenting / Q000523:psychology*; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D010551:Personality; D057566:Self Report