Measuring Informant Discrepancies

1 Pages 342 Words

There are important implications for diagnosis, assessment, and treatment based on discrepancies among informants’ ratings of child psychopathology. Measures are completed typically by parents and children to assess child dysfunction. These measures include self-report checklists and diagnostic instruments. Relatively little agreement on the nature and extent of the child’s social, emotional, and behavioral problems are some of the ratings gathered from these sources. The article reviewed and illustrates the most frequently used methods of measuring informant discrepancies in the clinical child literature (raw difference, standardized difference, and residual difference scores) and outlines key considerations to influence their selection. The article concludes that frequently used methods of measuring informant discrepancies are not interchangeable and recommend that future investigations examining informant discrepancies in clinical child research use the standardized difference score as their measure of informant discrepancies.
Child research is a very important area of the counseling profession. I have found that in many ways it is vital to its growth. I feel that it takes a special skill to become a child counselor. These discrepancies prove just that. I think that the standardized difference score is the best measure to use for informant discrepancies. The authors have carefully dealt with each score and decided that they are not compatible between each other. Out of the three given, I agree with the authors’ choice. There were several considerations that influenced this selection and the standardized difference score still came out best. I think that when a decision this heavy weighs upon factors like diagnosis, assessment, and treatment; it takes careful patience and time. I also feel that parents and children need to stop being the primary assessors of child dysfunction. This matter needs to be addre...