Date of Award
2020
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
William Chaplin
Second Advisor
Alice Pope
Third Advisor
Andrea Bergman
Abstract
One of the most prevalent ways to assess child and adolescent symptomatology is with a multiple-informant approach (Kraemer et al., 2003; De Los Reyes et al., 2015), yet mental health professionals commonly run into the problem of informant discrepancies in ratings of symptomatology (Achenbach, 2006). These comparisons are made on the observed scores; however, we argue that to simply compare mean scores may not be accurate and instead, researchers must examine the role of measurement invariance. We hypothesized that information discrepancies between parent and self-report on the YOQ is due to lack of measurement invariance. Our assessment of measurement invariance was based on differences in the factor structure and differential item functioning of the YOQ between parents and children at two timepoints (N Parents T1=70; N Parents T2=63; N Children T1=79; N Children T2=74) using Internalizing and Externalizing factor structures. The results from our study show that children and parents perceive symptoms differently, especially behavioral indicators of internalizing disorders. We conclude that direct comparisons of parent and child observed scores on the YOQ require the treating clinician to understand and acknowledge these discrepancies when developing an assessment-based case conceptualization and collaborative treatment plan. Implications and future directions are discussed.
Recommended Citation
Winarick, Jenna, "Conceptions of Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms: Identifying Parent and Child Differences Using Psychometric Analyses" (2020). Theses and Dissertations. 32.
https://scholar.stjohns.edu/theses_dissertations/32