Discrepancies Between Adolescent, Mother, and Father Reports of Adolescent Internalizing Symptom Levels and Their Association With Parent Symptoms

Discrepancies among informants on measures of internalizing symptoms in children and adolescents are common in the literature. One reason proposed for such discrepancies is that psychopathology may distort or bias third-party reports. In the present study, measures of adolescent internalizing symptom levels were completed by adolescents aged 13 to 18 years and their mothers and fathers. Parents also completed measures of their own depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms. Parent symptoms explained a small amount of variance in discrepancies between informants. Specifically, mothers' depression and stress symptoms were associated with discrepancies regarding sons' symptomatology and fathers' anxiety and stress symptoms were associated with discrepancies regarding daughters' symptomatology. Implications of informant discrepancies for both clinical practice and research are discussed. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol: 66:978-995, 2010.