Abstract
This study examines the relationships between perceived parental acceptance and children’s behavioral problems (externalizing and internalizing) from a multi-informant perspective. Using mothers, fathers, and children as sources of information, we explore the informant effect and incremental validity. The sample was composed of 681 participants (227 children, 227 fathers, and 227 mothers). Children’s (40% boys) ages ranged from 9 to 17 years (M = 12.52, SD = 1.81). Parents and children completed both the Parental Acceptance Rejection/Control Questionnaire (PARQ/Control) and the check list of the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment (ASEBA). Statistical analyses were based on the correlated uniqueness multitrait-multimethod matrix (model MTMM) by structural equations and different hierarchical regression analyses. Results showed a significant informant effect and a different incremental validity related to which combination of sources was considered. A multi-informant perspective rather than a single one increased the predictive value. Our results suggest that mother–father or child–father combinations seem to be the best way to optimize the multi-informant method in order to predict children’s behavioral problems based on perceived parental acceptance.
Highlights
The progress of psychology is inextricably linked to the development of new and more refined methods and strategies for measuring psychological concepts, models, and intervention programs (Eid and Diener, 2006)
The first aim of this study is to test for evidence of informant effects related to the links between parental acceptance and children’s behavioral problems as measured by children, fathers, and mothers through a round-robin design, in which all informants rate all targets
If we focus on the dependent variables, we observe that the correlation between the internalizing and the externalizing problems informed by children is 0.54
Summary
The progress of psychology is inextricably linked to the development of new and more refined methods and strategies for measuring psychological concepts, models, and intervention programs (Eid and Diener, 2006). Informant effects represent bias that can derive from the use of the same source of information in the assessment of different traits, the knowledge of informants, the observability of assessed traits, the judgment of informants, or the social desirability, among other factors (Cheng and Furnham, 2004; Neyer, 2006). For these reasons, determining the extent to which an informant effect is affecting the assessment of constructs and its relations is an important goal in determining the real construct validity. What remains unclear is whether a multi-informant approach to assessment validly captures contextual variations displayed in children’s behavioral problems or whether it instead reflects different perceptions or beliefs about what a symptom is, and, which informants ought to be included in assessments of children and adolescents
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