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Parenting Assessed by Observation versus Parent-report: Moderation by Parent Distress and Family Socioeconomic Status

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Abstract

Assessment of parenting frequently relies on parent self-report despite well-documented discrepancies between this methodology and observational measures. In the current study, we investigated patterns of disagreement between self-reported and observational measures of positive parenting and negative parenting with 102 dyads of parents and 4–6 year-old children. Specifically, we tested whether differences in parent distress and family socioeconomic status (SES) moderated the association between self-reported and observed parenting. Results showed significant interactions with less agreement between self-report and observational measures among parents reporting higher levels of distress and among families from lower SES backgrounds. Effects were more pronounced in models of negative parenting than those of positive parenting. Findings suggest that two factors relevant to parenting quality, emotional distress and SES, predict meaningful differences in manner of parent-report relative to observational measures. We discuss implications for the extant literature and for future efforts regarding effective and efficient parenting measurement.

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Author Contributions

J.H.: collaborated with study design and coding of observational data, assisted with data analysis, and wrote the paper. E.G.: assisted with coding of observational data, analyzed the data, and collaborated in editing the manuscript. J.O.: designed and executed the larger study, assisted with data analyses, and collaborated in writing and editing the manuscript.

Funding

This study was funded in part by grants from the William T. Grant Foundation and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Villanova University, 800 E. Lancaster Ave., Villanova, PA, 19004, USA

    Janette E. Herbers

  2. Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Elisa B. Garcia & Jelena Obradović

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  1. Janette E. Herbers
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  2. Elisa B. Garcia
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  3. Jelena Obradović
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Correspondence to Janette E. Herbers.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Herbers, J.E., Garcia, E.B. & Obradović, J. Parenting Assessed by Observation versus Parent-report: Moderation by Parent Distress and Family Socioeconomic Status. J Child Fam Stud 26, 3339–3350 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0848-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0848-8

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