Child-Parent Agreement in the Assessment of Young Children's Fears

Abstract

Finnish and Estonian parents' assessments of their 5- to 6-year-old children's fears (selected items of the Ollendick Fear Survey Schedule) were compared with children's self-reported fears in a semistructured interview that included a picture-aided section. Representative samples from Finland and Estonia consisted of 330 child-parent pairs. The level of agreement between the informants'assessmentswas lowin both countries. Children reported more fears than did their parents in comparable items. Parents in both countries seem to underestimate children's fears. These findings suggest that children should be primary informants of their fears. In addition, the same types of differences in children's fears were revealed between the countries irrespective of the informant. Finnish children expressed more fears related to issues of mental overexcitation; the fears of Estonian children more often concerned concrete people's behavior.