Concordance between Mothers' Reports and Children's Self-Reports of Depressive Symptoms: A Longitudinal Study

doi:10.1097/00004583-199402000-00008

Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

Volume 33, Issue 2, February 1994, Pages 208-216

https://doi.org/10.1097/00004583-199402000-00008 Get rights and content

Abstract

Objective

Developmental factors and maternal depression were examined for their impact on mother-child and clinician-child agreement concerning children's internal depressive symptoms.

Method

Data were derived from a clinically referred, racially mixed sample of school-age boys and girls (n = 113), with a study entry diagnosis of depression. Measures of agreement were based on parallel items from the self-rated Children's Depression Inventory, mother-rated Child Behavior Checklist, and clinician-rated, semistructured psychiatric interview with both the child and mother. Repeated measures of agreement were modeled longitudinally over a maximum of 7 years as a function of age, social-cognitive development, and maternal depression. Additional covariates were maternal psychopathology (excluding depression), socioeconomic status, and child's gender and verbal ability.

Results

Mother-child and clinician-child agreement increased as a function of the child's age during the follow-up and was consistently attenuated by maternal depression. Depressed mothers overrated their children's symptomatology as compared with the children's self-reports.

Conclusions

Clinicians should consider the young patient's age and level of maternal depression when weighing the relative merits of self-report and parental report of the child's depressive symptoms. Additional research is necessary to understand the mechanisms of change in parent-child agreement.

REFERENCES (34)

JH Kashani et al.
Informant variance: the issue of parent-child disagreement
J Am Acad Child Psychiatry
(1985)
SH McConaughy et al.
Three-year course of behavioral/emotional problems in a national sample of 4- to 16-year-olds: I. Agreement among informants
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
(1992)
MM Moretti et al.
Childhood and adolescent depression: child-report versus parent-report information
J Am Acad Child Psychiatry
(1985)
C Stavrakaki et al.
Concordance among sources of information for ratings of anxiety and depression in children
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
(1987)
American Psychiatric Association
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(1980)
TM Achenbach
The child behavior profile: I. Boys aged 6–11
J Consult Clin Psychol
(1978)
TM Achenbach et al.
Manual for the Child Behavior Checklist
(1983)
A Angold et al.
Parent and child reports of depressive symptoms in children at low and high risk of depression
J Child Psychol Psychiatry
(1987)
ML Barrett et al.
Diagnosing childhood depression: who should be interviewed - parent or child? The Newcastle child depression project
Br J Psychiatry
(1991)
AT Beck et al.
Cognitive Therapy of Depression
(1979)

AT Beck et al.

An inventory for measuring depression

Arch Gen Psychiatry

(1961)

DT Campbell et al.

Convergent and discriminant validation by the multitrait-multimethod matrix

Psychol Bull

(1959)

LR Derogatis et al.

The SCL-90: an outpatient psychiatric rating scale. A preliminary report

Psychopharmacol Bull

(1973)

G Downey et al.

Children of depressed parents: an integrative review

Psychol Bull

(1990)

C Edelbrock et al.

Parent-child agreement on child psychiatric symptoms assessed via structured interview

J Child Psychol Psychiatry

(1986)

C Edelbrock et al.

Age differences in the reliability of the psychiatric interview of the child

Child Dev

(1985)

DM Fergusson et al.

The effect of maternal depression on maternal ratings of child behavior

J Abnorm Child Psychol

(1993)

Cited by (127)

Parenting stress mediates the longitudinal effect of maternal depression on child anxiety/depressive symptoms
2021, Journal of Affective Disorders
Citation Excerpt :
Another limitation of the study is that the child anxiety/depressive symptoms were assessed using parent reports as clinicians’ measures were not available in the current dataset. As shown by Renouf and Kovacs (1994), depressed mothers tend to overrate their children's depressive symptoms. In addition, the child anxiety and depressive symptoms were assessed together based on the data availability.
Evidence is lacking for the longitudinal bidirectional relationship between maternal depression and child anxiety/depressive symptoms through pre-school to adolescence and regarding parenting stress as having a mediating effect on this association.
We performed a secondary analysis of data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study (n = 1,446 child-mother dyads in 20 main U.S. cities) collected at baseline, Year-5 (T1), Year-9 (T2) and Year-15 (T3) (from 1998 to 2017). Maternal depression, child anxiety/depressive symptoms and parenting stress were assessed at three time points (T1-T3). The associations were evaluated using autoregressive cross-lagged panel models.
Cross-lagged models indicated that 1) maternal depression significantly predicted subsequent higher child anxiety/depressive symptoms across all time points, and 2) greater child anxiety/depressive symptoms significantly predicted subsequent maternal depression across all time points. Furthermore, T1 maternal depression was indirectly associated with T3 child anxiety/depressive symptoms via T2 parenting stress [b = 0.010 (SE=0.004), p = 0.017]. However, T2 parenting stress did not significantly mediate the association between T1 child anxiety/depressive symptoms and T3 maternal depression [b = 0.004 (SE=0.004), p = 0.256].
The FFCWS oversampled unmarried parents and had a higher proportion of socio-economically disadvantaged racial and ethnic minority families, limiting the generalizability of findings.
Maternal depression is indirectly linked to child anxiety/depressive symptoms via parenting stress.
Using latent profile and transition analyses to understand patterns of informant ratings of child depressive symptoms
2018, Journal of School Psychology
The present study examined the latent profiles of child, parent, and teacher ratings of child depressive symptoms in a developmental sample of children from Hawaii at two time points (2nd and 3rd grade). The study attempted to identify patterns of agreement and discrepancy among raters and correlates of these patterns to test a new theory for understanding rating disagreements as Divergent Operations. Three profiles best described the ratings at both time points: Child-Only High Depression, Child-Only Mild Depression, and Normative (non-depressed). Second and third grade measures of child social skills, externalizing symptoms, attention problems, and language and academic competence confirmed the distinctiveness of these classes which provides support for a Divergent Operations perspective. Latent transition analyses suggested that depressive symptoms were relatively transient for each class. Implications regarding the measurement and identification of child depressive symptoms across development and the meaning and use of discrepant ratings are discussed.
The effect of maternal psychopathology on parent-child agreement of child anxiety symptoms: A hierarchical linear modeling approach
2015, Journal of Anxiety Disorders
Citation Excerpt :
While some studies have found a positive association between parental anxiety and reporting discrepancies (Briggs-Gowan, Carter, & Schwab-Stone, 1996; Frick, Silverthorn, & Evans, 1994; Manassis et al., 2009), others have found no effect (Krain & Kendall, 2000; Reuterskiöld et al., 2008). Further, parental depression has also been theorized as affecting parents’ reports of their children's anxiety (Berg-Nielsen, Vika, & Dahl, 2003; Renouf & Kovacs, 1994). Indeed, mothers self-reporting higher levels of depression have been found to report higher severity of their children's anxiety (Briggs-Gowan et al., 1996; Garber, Van Slyke, & Walker, 1998).
The current study examined the effects of maternal anxiety, worry, depression, child age and gender on mother and child reports of child anxiety using hierarchical linear modeling. Participants were 73 mother–child dyads with children between the ages of 7 and 10 years. Reports of child anxiety symptoms, including symptoms of specific disorders (e.g., social phobia) were obtained using concordant versions of the Screen for Anxiety and Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED). Children reported significantly higher levels of anxiety symptoms relative to their mothers. Maternal worry and depression predicted for significantly lower levels of maternal-reported child anxiety and increasing discrepant reports. Maternal anxiety predicted for higher levels of maternal-reported child anxiety and decreasing discrepant reports. Maternal depression was associated with increased child-reported child anxiety symptoms. No significant effect of child age or gender was observed. Findings may inform inconsistencies in previous studies on reporter discrepancies. Implications and future directions are discussed.
Assessment of self-reported negative affect in the NIH Toolbox
2013, Psychiatry Research
Citation Excerpt :
Several studies have shown that parents and children often disagree, especially when the phenomena in question are internal and not directly observable, i.e., sadness, fear (Kolko and Kazdin, 1993; Yeh and Weisz, 2001; Salbach-Andrae et al., 2009). Additionally, parent proxy reports can be influenced by the parent’s own symptoms (Fergusson et al., 1993; Renouf and Kovacs, 1994; Garber et al., 1998). Emotion “can be manifested as brief states, as longer but still transitory moods, and as traits or patterns of expression that characterize an individual over significant periods of the lifespan” (Goldsmith, 1993).
We report on the selection of self-report measures for inclusion in the NIH Toolbox that are suitable for assessing the full range of negative affect including sadness, fear, and anger. The Toolbox is intended to serve as a “core battery” of assessment tools for cognition, sensation, motor function, and emotional health that will help to overcome the lack of consistency in measures used across epidemiological, observational, and intervention studies. A secondary goal of the NIH Toolbox is the identification of measures that are flexible, efficient, and precise, an agenda best fulfilled by the use of item banks calibrated with models from item response theory (IRT) and suitable for adaptive testing. Results from a sample of 1763 respondents supported use of the adult and pediatric item banks for emotional distress from the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS^®) as a starting point for capturing the full range of negative affect in healthy individuals. Content coverage for the adult Toolbox was also enhanced by the development of a scale for somatic arousal using items from the Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire (MASQ) and scales for hostility and physical aggression using items from the Buss–Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ).
Parent-child agreement on children's psychopathology and the impact of parental depression
2024, International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research
A National School Health Campaign in Lebanon on Children Aged between 3 and 12 Years Old: Concordance Level between Parents’ Reports and Medical Visit Findings about Physical and Mental Health
2024, Children

View all citing articles on Scopus

: Preparation of this paper was supported by Grant MH-33990 from the National Institute of Mental Health, Health and Human Services Administration. Appreciation is expressed to Lydia Voti, M.S., and Phoebe Lucy Parrone, M.S., for statistical and data analytic contributions, and to Erin Knox, B.A., for assistance during preparation of this manuscript.

View full text

SPECIAL ARTICLEConcordance between Mothers' Reports and Children's Self-Reports of Depressive Symptoms: A Longitudinal Study

Abstract

Objective

Method

Results

Conclusions

J Am Acad Child Psychiatry

J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry

J Am Acad Child Psychiatry

J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

The child behavior profile: I. Boys aged 6–11

J Consult Clin Psychol

Manual for the Child Behavior Checklist

Parent and child reports of depressive symptoms in children at low and high risk of depression

J Child Psychol Psychiatry

Diagnosing childhood depression: who should be interviewed - parent or child? The Newcastle child depression project

Br J Psychiatry

Cognitive Therapy of Depression

An inventory for measuring depression

Arch Gen Psychiatry

Convergent and discriminant validation by the multitrait-multimethod matrix

Psychol Bull

The SCL-90: an outpatient psychiatric rating scale. A preliminary report

Psychopharmacol Bull

Children of depressed parents: an integrative review

Psychol Bull

Parent-child agreement on child psychiatric symptoms assessed via structured interview

J Child Psychol Psychiatry

Age differences in the reliability of the psychiatric interview of the child

Child Dev

The effect of maternal depression on maternal ratings of child behavior

J Abnorm Child Psychol

SPECIAL ARTICLE
Concordance between Mothers' Reports and Children's Self-Reports of Depressive Symptoms: A Longitudinal Study