Agreement between Parent and Child Reports on Parental Behaviors

Abstract

This research studies parent-child agreement on parenting behaviors and mediators of agreement for 134 families. Results of the multitrait-multi-method analyses reveal a low degree of agreement between parents and children in reports of parental behaviors. Differential levels of agreement between father-child and mother-child reports suggest that reports of parental behaviors might be related to children's transition from preadolescence to early adolescence, family structure, and children's characteristics. The influence of these factors implies that the differences in reports between parents and children are not random and the practice of aggregating scores across reporters within the family to integrate data may not be justified