Researchers use multiple informants’ reports to assess and examine behavior. However, informants’ reports commonly disagree. Informants’ reports often disagree in their perceived levels of a behavior (“low” vs. “elevated” mood), and examining multiple reports in a single study often results in inconsistent findings. Although researchers often espouse taking a multi-informant assessment approach, they frequently address informant discrepancies using techniques that treat discrepancies as measurement error. Yet, recent work indicates that researchers in a variety of fields often may be unable to justify treating informant discrepancies as measurement error. In this paper, the authors advance a framework (Operations Triad Model) outlining general principles for using and interpreting informants’ reports. Using the framework, researchers can test whether or not they can extract meaningful information about behavior from discrepancies among multiple informants’ reports. The authors provide supportive evidence for this framework and discuss its implications for hypothesis testing, study design, and quantitative review.

This study examined the longitudinal consistency of mother–child reporting discrepancies of parental monitoring and whether these discrepancies predict children’s delinquent behaviors 2 years later. Participants included 335 mother/female-caregiver and child (46% boys, >90% African American; age range 9–16 years [M = 12.11, SD = 1.60]) dyads living in moderate-to-high violence areas. Mother–child discrepancies were internally consistent within multiple assessment points and across measures through a 2-year follow-up assessment. Further, mothers who at baseline consistently reported higher levels of parental monitoring relative to their child had children who reported greater levels of delinquent behaviors 2 years later, relative to mother–child dyads that did not evidence consistent discrepancies. This finding could not be accounted for by baseline levels of the child’s delinquency, maternal and child emotional distress, or child demographic characteristics. This finding was not replicated when relying on the individual reports of parental monitoring to predict child delinquency, suggesting that mother–child reporting discrepancies provided information distinct from the absolute frequency of reports. Findings suggest that mother–child discrepancies in reports of parental monitoring can be employed as new individual differences measurements in developmental psychopathology research.

Discrepancies often occur among informants' reports of various domains of child and family functioning and are particularly common between parent and child reports of youth violence exposure. However, recent work suggests that discrepancies between parent and child reports predict subsequent poorer child outcomes. We propose a preliminary conceptual model (Discrepancies in Victimization Implicate Developmental Effects [DiVIDE]) that considers how and why discrepancies between parents' and youths' ratings of child victimization may be related to poor adjustment outcomes. The model addresses how dyadic processes, such as the parent-youth relationship and youths' information management, might contribute to discrepancies. We also consider coping processes that explain why discrepancies may predict increases in youth maladjustment. Based on this preliminary conceptual framework, we offer suggestions and future directions for researchers who encounter conflicting reports of community violence exposure and discuss why the proposed model is relevant to interventions for victimized youths.

This study examined whether mothers' and children's depressive symptoms were each uniquely related to mother-child rating discrepancies on a multidimensional dyadic construct: domains associated with parental monitoring (i.e., Child Disclosure, Parental Knowledge, and Parental Solicitation). Participants included a community sample of 335 mother/female-caregiver and child dyads (182 girls, 153 boys; 9−16 years old). Children's depressive symptoms were consistently related to each of the three domains of mother-child discrepancies. Mothers' depressive symptoms were related to perceived discrepancies in two domains (Child Disclosure and Parental Knowledge). Furthermore, these relations could not be accounted for by other informant characteristics (maternal stress, child age, child gender, child ethnicity). Findings provide important empirical support for theory suggesting that both informants' perspectives meaningfully contribute to their discrepancies in perceived behavior. Consideration of both informants' perspectives leads to valuable information as to whether any particular characteristic is an important correlate of discrepancies. Keywords attribution bias context; correspondence; depression-distortion; disagreement; informant discrepanciesIn the clinical sciences, the absence of definitive measures of constructs makes it critical to gather information on a participant's psychosocial dysfunction from the perspectives of multiple informants (e.g., self, significant other, clinician, laboratory observer, biological indices). However, one of the most consistent yet poorly understood phenomena is that multiple informants provide inconsistent ratings of the same participant's psychosocial dysfunction (e.g., Achenbach, 2006;De Los Reyes & Kazdin, 2005). Discrepancies are critical for numerous reasons. First, they are present across measurement methods (De Los Reyes & Kazdin, 2005) and areas of psychological science (e.g., Barrett, 2006;Clancy, McGrath, & Oddson, 2005;Kenny, Albright, Malloy, & Kashy, 1994;Saudino, Wertz, Gagne, & Chawla, 2004). Second, discrepancies pose significant interpretive problems for researchers studying NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript the prevalence of dysfunction, risk factors, types of dysfunction to target for intervention, and the identification of evidence-based interventions (De Los Reyes & Kazdin, 2005, 2008. Third, discrepant perceptions between informants are related to how they interact with one another and may predict and/or negatively affect psychosocial and physiological functioning (e.g., Beck, Hartos, & Simons-Morton, 2006;Ferdinand, van der Ende, & Verhulst, 2004;Kiecolt-Glaser et al., 2005). Thus, the implications of discrepancies highlight the importance of understanding why they exist.Research on mechanisms accounting for discrepancies currently is at a preliminary stage (De Los Reyes & Kazdin, 2005). In fact, the clinical discrepancies literature has paid most attention to examining the relation between discrepancies a...