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Collateral Reports and Cross-Informant Agreement about Adult Psychopathology in 14 Societies

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Abstract

To advance international mental health assessment, instruments that have been internationally validated are needed. To this end, we analyzed ratings from 14 societies on the Adult Behavior Checklist (ABCL), a collateral-report form parallel to the Adult Self-Report (ASR; Achenbach and Rescorla 2003) for ages 18 to 59. Both the ABCL and the ASR assess problems, personal strengths, and adaptive functioning. For a sample of 8322 see note below collaterals, we found strong consistency across societies regarding which ABCL problem items tended to obtain relatively low, medium, or high ratings. Most societal effect sizes (ESs) for problem scale scores were small to medium (< 13.9 %), but the ES for the ABCL Personal Strengths scale was 25 %. For most of the same participants (N = 8,302), we analyzed cross-informant agreement between self-reports on the ASR and collateral reports on the ABCL. Cross-informant correlations for problem scale scores averaged .47, with considerable societal variation. Problem score means were higher on the ASR than the ABCL in every society, but the size of the difference varied across societies. Mean item ratings on the ABCL and ASR were highly correlated within every society (mean r = .92), but within-dyad item rating agreement varied widely in every society (mean r = .39). In all societies, non-corroboration of self-reported deviance and of collateral-reported deviance was common. Overall findings indicated considerable similarity but also some important differences in collateral-reported problems and adaptive functioning across 14 societies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bryn Mawr College, 101 N. Merion Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA, 19010, USA

    Leslie A. Rescorla

  2. University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA

    Thomas M. Achenbach, Masha Y. Ivanova & Lori V. Turner

  3. University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland

    Hervör Árnadóttir & Halldór S. Guðmundsson

  4. Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong

    Alma Au

  5. Instituto Superior de Ciencias da Saude-Norte, Gandra, Portugal

    J. C. Caldas

  6. National Chung-Cheng University, Chiayi County, Taiwan

    Yi-Chuen Chen

  7. Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Jeroen Decoster & Johnny Fontaine

  8. Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Yasuko Funabiki

  9. The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong

    Patrick Leung

  10. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Jianghong Liu

  11. Clinic for Psychiatry, Clinical Center of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, Serbia

    Jelena Srdanović Maraš & Jasminka Marković

  12. Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea

    Kyung Ja Oh

  13. Mackenzie Presbyterian University, São Paulo, Brazil

    Marina M. da Rocha

  14. Pontifica Universidad Católica Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Virginia C. Samaniego & Natalia Vazquez

  15. University of Sao Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Edwiges Silvares

  16. Klaipeda University, Klaipėda, Lithuania

    Roma Simulioniene

  17. University of Tirana, Tirana, Albania

    Elvisa Sokoli

  18. The Maria Grzegorzewska Academy of Special Education, Warsaw, Poland

    Ewa Zasepa

Authors
  1. Leslie A. Rescorla
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  2. Thomas M. Achenbach
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  3. Masha Y. Ivanova
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  4. Lori V. Turner
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  5. Hervör Árnadóttir
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  6. Alma Au
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  7. J. C. Caldas
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  8. Yi-Chuen Chen
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  9. Jeroen Decoster
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  10. Johnny Fontaine
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  11. Yasuko Funabiki
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  12. Halldór S. Guðmundsson
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  13. Patrick Leung
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  14. Jianghong Liu
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  15. Jelena Srdanović Maraš
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  16. Jasminka Marković
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  17. Kyung Ja Oh
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  18. Marina M. da Rocha
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  19. Virginia C. Samaniego
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  20. Edwiges Silvares
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  21. Roma Simulioniene
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  22. Elvisa Sokoli
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  23. Natalia Vazquez
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  24. Ewa Zasepa
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Leslie A. Rescorla.

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Conflict of Interest

The ABCL and the ASR are published by the nonprofit University of Vermont Research Center for Children, Youth, and Families, from which authors Rescorla, Achenbach, Ivanova, and Turner receive remuneration.

Experiment Participants

In each society, conventions for obtaining informed consent required by the investigator’s research institution were followed.

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Rescorla, L.A., Achenbach, T.M., Ivanova, M.Y. et al. Collateral Reports and Cross-Informant Agreement about Adult Psychopathology in 14 Societies. J Psychopathol Behav Assess 38, 381–397 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-016-9541-2

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