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The Clinical Significance of Informant Agreement in Externalizing Behavior from Age 3 to 14

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Abstract

The objective of the current study was to test to what extent agreement between preschool teachers (using a questionnaire-based assessment) and clinicians (using a clinician-rated behavioral task) with regard to externalizing problems in early childhood was predictive of parent reports of children’s externalizing behavior trajectory from age 3 to age 14. The prospective longitudinal study was conducted over five waves with 111 clinically referred children aged 3–5 years in wave 1. Analyses were conducted using a multilevel modeling framework. The results of the conditional model testing the association of informant agreement with behavioral trajectories show that the greater the number of informants reporting a high level of behavioral problems in early childhood, the more the trajectory increases until adolescence. The results stress the importance of multi-informant assessment not only for methodological reasons but in order to target at-risk children.

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Acknowledgements

Marie Stievenart and Jean-Christophe Meunier were PhD students and postdoctoral fellows in the H2M Children research program. They were involved in data collection in the three first waves. Marie Stievenart was also responsible for the data collection in wave 4. Dominique Charlier, Philippe Kinoo and Marie-Cécile Nassogne were psychiatrists or pediatricians in the H2M research program. They were responsible for children’s referral to the longitudinal study. We also wish to warmly thank the children and their parents who participated in this project. The project was funded by the Special Research Fund at the university of Louvain in Belgium and by the Marie Marguerite Delacroix Foundation.

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  1. Psychological Sciences Research Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, 10, Place du Cardinal Mercier, 1348, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Isabelle Roskam

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  1. Isabelle Roskam
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Correspondence to Isabelle Roskam.

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Roskam, I. The Clinical Significance of Informant Agreement in Externalizing Behavior from Age 3 to 14. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev 49, 563–571 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-017-0775-3

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