Clinical Assessment of Child and Adolescent Personality and ...

346chapter 15 integrating and interpreting assessment informationHowever, there was additional support forthe relative importance of children’s selfreportof anxiety. Children’s self-reportsof anxiety disorders were always accompaniedby confirmation by their parents.However, parental report was not alwaysconfirmed by the child, and parent–childdisagreements on the presence of an anxietydisorder were systematically related tothe parents’ own level of anxiety. Theseauthors concluded that there was evidencefor parental projection of their own anxietyonto their reports of anxiety in their children.This provides some preliminary supportfor the relative emphasis on children’sself-report of anxiety, at least in this agegroup (9–13 years) of children.Informant Discrepanciesand Age of ChildAnother factor that might affect the qualityof information provided by different informantsis the age of the child or adolescentbeing assessed. First, one would expectthat, as a child grows older, parents wouldhave less knowledge of the child’s emotionsand behaviors, especially as parent–child relationships change in adolescence(Paikoff & Brooks-Gunn, 1991). Similarly,as a child leaves early elementary school,the likelihood of a single teacher spendinga great deal of time with a child decreases.Third, as a child develops cognitively, heor she may become better able to reporton such abstract concepts as emotionsand thoughts. As a result of these factors,one would expect that the importance ofparents and teachers as informants woulddecrease with age and the importance ofchildren’s self-report would increase.Edelbrock et al. (1985) tested thesehypothesized age effects on parent andchild reports using structured diagnosticinterviews. Using two-week test-retestcorrelations as the index of reliability, theseauthors found that the reliability of parentreport decreased with age as predicted,although the reliability generally remainedat an acceptable level into adolescence.Children’s self-report showed a more dramaticage trend. Children’s self-report onthe structured interviews showed a clearincrease in reliability with age. Importantly,the reliability of child self-report onthe structured interviews was quite poorbefore age 9. Evidence for the predicteddecrease in reliability of teacher’s reportalso was obtained from another source.Specifically, in the initial developmentof the Behavioral Assessment System forChildren, it was found that the reliabilityfor the Teacher Report Form decreasedwith age (Reynolds & Kamphaus, 1992).One question in interpreting theseresults is whether the changes in reliabilityacross age are confined to structuredtechniques, like structured interviewsand behavior rating scales. At least thefindings for children’s self-report are notconfined to structured techniques. Thereliability of children’s responses to projectivetechniques has also been foundto increase with age (Exner, Thomas, &Mason, 1985). Therefore, the hypothesizedage-related changes in the reliabilityof various informants have generallybeen supported in research across a numberof assessment domains. These findingson the limited reliability of childself-report for very young children maynot be surprising for many clinicianswho work with young children. However,clinical assessors who work largelywith older children, adolescents, oradults tend to use a traditional approachto assessment that relies heavily on selfreportand may be uncomfortable with areduced role of self-report in the assessmentof young children.A final issue related to informant discrepanciesand age of the child relates tothe level of agreement between informantsother than the child (e.g. parent and teachers).In their meta-analysis of 119 studies,Achenbach et al. (1987) reported that parentand teacher ratings were in greater