Understanding discrepancies in parent-child reporting of emotional and behavioural problems: Effects of relational and socio-demographic factors

Table 1 Differences and agreement in SDQ ratings for reports from parents and self-reports

	Total difficulties			Emotional			Conduct			Hyperactivity			Peer problems			Prosocial			Impact
	mean (SD)		t-test.	mean (SD)		t-test.	mean (SD)		t-test.	mean (SD)		t-test.	mean (SD)		t-test.	mean (SD)		t-test.	mean (SD)		t-test.
a) MEAN (SD)	boys	girls		boys	girls		boys	girls		boys	girls		boys	girls		boys	girls		boys	girls
Parents' report N = 4,279/4,238	6.6 (5.2)	5.7 (4.8)	***	1.2 (1.7)	1.4 (1.8)	***	1.1 (1.4)	1.0 (1.2)	***	3.0 (2.4)	2.2 (2.0)	***	1.3 (1.7)	1.1 (1.6)	***	8.0 (1.7)	8.5 (1.5)	***	0.5 (1.3)	0.3 (1.0)	***
Self-report N = 4,101/4,096	10.1 (5.2)	10.0 (5.1)	n.s.	2.2 (1.9)	3.0 (2.2)	***	2.1 (1.7)	1.7 (1.4)	***	3.8 (2.1)	3.5 (2.0)	***	2.1 (1.8	1.9 (1.7)	***	7.4 (1.8)	8.2 (1.6)	***	0.3 (0.9)	0.3 1.0)	**
*b) PAIRED SAMPLE T-Test (parent/self-report)*	***	***		***	***		***	***		***	***		***	***		***	***		***	**
Effect size	-0.67	-0.87		-0.56	0.80		-0.64	-0.54		-0.35	-0.65		-0.46	-0.48		0.34	0.19		0.18	0.00
*c) CORRELATIONS* Parent-child			z test			z test			z test			z test			z test			z test			z test
Boys: 4,076/girls: 4,061	0.38**	0.40**	n.s.	0.25**	0.34**	***	0.27**	0.26	n.s.	0.33**	0.31**	n.s.	0.35**	0.33**	n.s.	0.23**	0.20**	n.s.	0.19	0.21	***
Total sample: N: 8,154	0.39**			0.30**			0.27**			0.33**			0.34**			0.24**			0.19**

* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001; n.s. = non-significant
Independent sample t-test and effect sizes for gender differences; paired sample t-tests for differences in means between 8,154 matched cases.
Z-test: Significance of differences in Pearson's correlations between parents and sons, and between parents and daughters.
Impact: total impact score includes those who answered "no" to the question of perceived difficulties and automatically had an impact score of zero

ISSN: 1471-244X