A Basis for Comparison: The Congruence of Mother-Teacher Ratings of Externalizing Behavior as a Function of Family Size
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ORIGINAL PAPER
A Basis for Comparison: The Congruence of Mother-Teacher Ratings of Externalizing Behavior as a Function of Family Size Peter J. Castagna
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Robert D. Laird2 Matthew Calamia1 Thompson E. Davis III1 ●
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Accepted: 27 September 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The goal of the current study was to examine the role number of children in a family has on the discrepancy between motherand teacher-reported externalizing problems. A total of 243 youth and mothers (Mage = 9.92 ± 2.84 years; age range: 8–16 years; 129 males and 114 females) presented for a psychological evaluation. Behavioral reports were gathered from the Child-Behavior Checklist and the Teacher Rating Form. A factorial analysis of variance first tested for mean-level discrepancies between informant reports across four sibling groups. Next, a polynomial regression analysis tested rank-order discrepancies as a function of sibling groups. Results indicated that mother-teacher mean-level discrepancies did not differ as a function of the number of children in the household. In contrast, rank-order discrepancies did differ across sibling groups; mothers with fewer children had higher congruence with teacher-reported externalizing problems. Overall, mother-teacher rank-order agreement was greatest when the child was an only child and decreased modestly with the first and each additional sibling. We discuss these findings in light of previous literature and provide direction for future literature examining mother-teacher informant discrepancies. Keywords Reporter discrepancy ADHD Assessment Multiple informant ●
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Highlights The number of children in a family is related to differences in mother- and teacher-reported externalizing problems. ● Rank-order discrepancies differed across sibling groups; mothers with fewer children had highest congruence with teacher-report. ● Mother-teacher rank-order agreement was greatest when the child was an only child, decreasing with each additional sibling. ● Mean-level mother-teacher discrepancies did not differ as a function of the number of children. ●
When assessing child psychopathology, data are typically obtained from caregivers, teachers, and the children being assessed (Hunsley and Mash 2007). Informants may differ in both the level of symptoms they report for a given group of children and in their perceptions of which children are the most and least problematic. For example, one informant
* Peter J. Castagna [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA
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Department of Human Development & Family Studies, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA
may have a lower threshold for reporting the presence of symptoms than another informant, which would produce a discrepancy in the mean-level of reported symptoms, even if the informants agreed perfectly when asked to rank the children from most to least problematic. It is also possible that informants could report id
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