Introduction to the Special Section: More Than Measurement Error: Discovering Meaning Behind Informant Discrepancies in Clinical Assessments of Children and Adolescents

2011/01/11 by Andres De Los Reyes · 7 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development #Early Childhood Education and Development #Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes

paper · doi:10.1080/15374416.2011.533405

openalex publication_date 2011/01/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/02

Abstract

Discrepancies often arise among multiple informants' reports of child and adolescent psychopathology and related constructs (e.g., parenting, family relationship quality and functioning, parental monitoring). Recently, studies using various designs (laboratory, longitudinal, randomized controlled trial, meta-analysis) have revealed that discrepancies among informants' reports (a) yield important information regarding where children express behaviors (time course, features of the context[s] of behavioral expression) and about the informants who observe their expression, (b) demonstrate stability over time in both community and clinic settings, (c) predict poor child and adolescent outcomes in ways that the individual informants' reports do not, and (d) can be used to identify meaningful treatment outcomes patterns within randomized controlled trials. Using existing data sources, the articles in this special section expand upon this emerging body of research. In particular, the articles illustrate how clinical science and practice can use informant discrepancies to increase understanding of the causes and consequences of, as well as treatments for, child and adolescent psychopathology.

Citations

• Parent-Adolescent Disagreement Regarding Psychopathology in Adolescents From the General Population as a Risk Factor for Adverse Outcome.
• Treating anxiety disorders in children: Results of a randomized clinical trial.

Cited by

• Principles Underlying the Use of Multiple Informants' Reports
• Integrating multi-informant reports of youth mental health: A construct validation test of Kraemer and colleagues’ (2003) Satellite Model
• The Needs-to-Goals Gap: How informant discrepancies in youth mental health assessments impact service delivery
• Integrating Multiple Informants’ Reports: How Conceptual and Measurement Models May Address Long-Standing Problems in Clinical Decision-Making
• Conceptual, methodological, and measurement factors that disqualify use of measurement invariance techniques to detect informant discrepancies in youth mental health assessments
• The Operations Triad Model and Youth Mental Health Assessments: Catalyzing a Paradigm Shift in Measurement Validation
• Andres De Los Reyes [wikipedia]