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Assessing the Mental Health of Maltreated Youth with Child Welfare Involvement Using Multi-Informant Reports

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Abstract

Researchers often question the validity of multi-informant assessments among adolescents with child welfare involvement. Yet, within other clinical populations, prior research finds that multi-informant reports have a discernable structure characterized by discrete patterns of agreement and disagreement. This structure “tracks” contextual displays of behavior and clinical severity. We examined the structure of multi-informant reports (i.e., adolescent, caregiver, teacher) of adolescent externalizing and internalizing problems in a sample of adolescents with a history of child welfare involvement. Across problem domains and informants, reporting patterns mirrored those observed in other clinical populations, and displayed characteristics robustly present in meta-analytic work on cross-informant correspondence. Specifically, informants agreed more on reports of externalizing problems than internalizing problems and caregiver-teacher dyads agreed more than adolescent-caregiver dyads. Overall, we found robust, replicable patterns of multi-informant reports among child welfare involved adolescents. These reporting patterns may facilitate use and interpretation of multi-informant evidence-based assessments among this population.

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Notes

  1. Using ANOVA analyses, we tested between-class mean differences on individual informants’ continuous reports from which we derived categorical indicators in our LCA models. Across all LCA models, we consistently observed mean differences in the directions reflected by classes in our LCA models (all ps < .001). That is, for each informant, being in a “high reporting” group was associated with significantly higher continuous reports than when the informant was in a “low reporting” group. These ANOVA analyses indicate that the LCA models accurately reflected the underlying continuous data from which we constructed indicators entered into the models. A full report of the results of these supplementary analyses is available from the corresponding author.

  2. Given the variability between time of data collection for adolescent-caregiver reports and teacher reports, we tested whether this variability in time was associated with levels of our criterion variable (i.e., LCA classes including teacher reports). One-way ANOVA analyses revealed that the difference in time between collection of adolescent-caregiver and teacher reports was not associated with patterns of caregiver-teacher reports (all ps > 0.06) or adolescent-teacher reports (all ps > 0.56).

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Funding

This project was principally supported by Grants awarded to the fifth author from the National Institute of Mental Health (1 K01 MH01972, 1 R21 802 MH067618, and 1 R01 MH076919) and also received substantial funding from the Kempe Foundation, Pioneer Fund, Daniels Fund, and Children’s Hospital Research Institute. Effort on this paper by the first and second author was supported, in part, by a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (R324A180032). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health or the Institute of Education Sciences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Comprehensive Assessment and Intervention Program, University of Maryland At College Park, 3144 Biology/Psychology Building, Room 3123K, College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    Bridget A. Makol & Andres De Los Reyes

  2. University of Denver, 2148 South High Street, Denver, CO, 80208, USA

    Edward Garrido & Heather Taussig

  3. Kempe Center, University of Colorado School of Medicine, 13123 E 16th Avenue, Aurora, CO, 80045, USA

    Nicole Harlaar & Heather Taussig

Authors
  1. Bridget A. Makol
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  2. Andres De Los Reyes
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  3. Edward Garrido
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  4. Nicole Harlaar
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  5. Heather Taussig
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Correspondence to Bridget A. Makol.

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Makol, B.A., De Los Reyes, A., Garrido, E. et al. Assessing the Mental Health of Maltreated Youth with Child Welfare Involvement Using Multi-Informant Reports. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev 52, 49–62 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-020-00985-8

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