The behavior of children in 21 child abusive and 21 nonabusive matched comparison families were compared using home observations performed by professional independent observers and parental report measures (Becker Bipolar Adjective Checklist, Child Behavior Checklist, Parent Daily Report). Parental report measures of child conduct problems differed significantly between the two groups, independent observations showed few significant differences in rates of either child or parental behaviors. Results are discussed in terms of the validity of parental perceptions and reports of child problem behaviors, the informativeness of differing reports for diagnosis and clinical treatment, and the need to gather corroboration across various sources and settings before clinical decisions are made that may irrevocably alter a child's future development.

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Tested a structural model {Patterson, 1986) of the effects of parental discipline on child coercive and antisocial behavior using a sample of 65 recently separated single-mother families with 6-to 8-yearold boys. Previous tests of this model used older boys and samples that allowed family structure to vary. The replication model produced acceptable fit, x 2 (61,^=65) = 70.6, p = . 188, and explained 11% of the variance in antisocial behavior. Five alternative models were tested on this sample and are discussed briefly. The significance of generalization to this sample is discussed for the model's clinical usefulness, and further improvements to increase explainable variance are suggested. This research was supported by Grants MH17126, MH38318, and MH37940, from the National Institute of Mental Health. We wish to acknowledge the critical assistance of Lew Bank, Marion Forgatch, Gerald R. Patterson, and John B. Reid as well as helpful comments from the anonymous reviewers and the excellent data gathering abilities of the staff at the Oregon Social Learning Center. We also thank J. J. McArdle for his careful and detailed comments on earlier drafts of this article.

The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIJ.