Mother-Child Agreement on Reports of Internalizing Symptoms Among Children Referred for Evaluation of ADHD

The effects of maternal (bias), child (age, severity of behavior problems), and measurement characteristics (similarity of parent and child measures; types of internalizing symptoms) on mother-child agreement on reports of childrenʹs internalizing symptoms were examined for 65 children referred for evaluation of ADHD. Agreement was low and did not improve when parents and children completed parallel measures. Mothers and children were more likely to agree on severity of internalizing symptoms rated as behavioral than those rated as ideational. The majority of discordant reports were of the type that mothers, but not children, reported clinically elevated symptoms. This type of discordance appeared to be a function of maternal negative bias rather than underreporting of symptoms by children.