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The Relations among Measurements of Informant Discrepancies within a Multisite Trial of Treatments for Childhood Social Phobia

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Abstract

Discrepancies between informants’ reports of children’s behavior are robustly observed in clinical child research and have important implications for interpreting the outcomes of controlled treatment trials. However, little is known about the basic psychometric properties of these discrepancies. This study examined the relation between parent-child reporting discrepancies on measures of child social phobia symptoms, administered before and after treatment for social phobia. Participants included a clinic sample of 81 children (7–16 years old [M = 11.75, SD = 2.57]; 39 girls, 42 boys) and their parents receiving treatment as part of a multisite controlled trial. Pretreatment parent-child reporting discrepancies predicted parent-child discrepancies at posttreatment, and these relations were not better accounted for by the severity of the child’s pretreatment primary diagnosis. Further, treatment responder status moderated this relation: Significant relations were identified for treatment non-responders and not for treatment responders. Overall, findings suggest that informant discrepancies can be reliably employed to measure individual differences over the course of controlled treatment trials. These data provide additional empirical support for recent work suggesting that informant discrepancies can meaningfully inform understanding of treatment response as well as variability in treatment outcomes.

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Notes

  1. We conducted exploratory analyses to examine whether the 81 parents and children examined in this study differed from the rest of the sample at pretreatment as a function of demographic (e.g., child age, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status), pretreatment functioning (e.g., primary diagnosis type, clinical severity of primary diagnosis, broadband internalizing and externalizing problems [Child Behavior Checklist; Achenbach 1991], SPAIC scores), or treatment characteristics (e.g., treatment condition, treatment site). We conducted a large number of tests (n = 13) and did not have a priori hypotheses to advance. Thus, we set a pre-defined bonferroni-corrected p-value threshold for these tests of 0.004 (i.e., .05/13). Across these 13 tests, none of these factors evidenced a significant relation to inclusion/exclusion into this study.

  2. We conducted exploratory analyses to examine whether measures of parent-child reporting discrepancies at either pre- or posttreatment varied as a function of demographic (e.g., child age, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status), pretreatment functioning (e.g., primary diagnosis type, clinical severity of primary diagnosis, broadband internalizing and externalizing problems [Child Behavior Checklist; Achenbach 1991]), or treatment characteristics (e.g., treatment condition, treatment site, treatment attrition, treatment response status). We conducted a large number of tests (n = 30) and did not have a priori hypotheses to advance. Thus, we set a pre-defined bonferroni-corrected p-value threshold of 0.001 (i.e., .05/30). Across these 30 tests, none of these factors had a significant relationship to either pre- or posttreatment reporting discrepancies.

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Acknowledgement

The authors acknowledge the efforts of Patricia Rao, Ph.D., Project Coordinator, Richard Gross, M.D., and Stephen Kwass, M.D., psychiatrists.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Maryland at College Park, Biology/Psychology Building, Room 3123H, College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    Andres De Los Reyes

  2. Children’s National Medical Center, The George Washington School of Medicine, 111 Michigan Avenue, NW, Washington DC, 20010, USA

    Candice A. Alfano

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Central Florida, 4000 Central Florida Blvd, Orlando, FL, 32816, USA

    Deborah C. Beidel

Authors
  1. Andres De Los Reyes
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  2. Candice A. Alfano
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  3. Deborah C. Beidel
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Correspondence to Andres De Los Reyes.

Additional information

This research was supported in part by NIMH grant R01MH53703 to the third author. Lilly Corporation supplied the fluoxetine and matching placebo capsules. Clinical trial registration information-URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov; Unique identifier: NCT00043537.

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De Los Reyes, A., Alfano, C.A. & Beidel, D.C. The Relations among Measurements of Informant Discrepancies within a Multisite Trial of Treatments for Childhood Social Phobia. J Abnorm Child Psychol 38, 395–404 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-009-9373-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-009-9373-6

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