Inadequate parental monitoring is widely recognized as a risk factor for the development of child and adolescent conduct problems. However, previous studies examining parental monitoring have largely measured parental knowledge and not the active methods used by parents to track the activities and behavior of their children. The seminal work of Stattin and Kerr (Child Dev 71:1072-1085, 2000; Kerr and Stattin in Dev Psychol 36:366-380, 2000) has challenged the field to reinterpret the construct of parental monitoring, focusing on the active components of this parenting behavior. As a result, this area of research has witnessed a resurgence of activity. The goal of the current paper is to review the evidence regarding the relationship between parental knowledge and monitoring and child and adolescent conduct problems that has accumulated during the past decade. Forty-seven studies published between 2000 and 2010 were identified by searching major databases and bibliographies and were included in this review. This paper will examine the following areas: (a) "parental monitoring" as "parental knowledge"; (b) parental knowledge as driven by child disclosure; (c) the relationship between parental knowledge and monitoring and child and adolescent conduct problems; (d) bidirectional associations between parental knowledge and monitoring and child and adolescent conduct problems; (e) contextual influences on parental knowledge and monitoring; (f) antecedents of parental knowledge and monitoring; (g) clinical implications of research on parental knowledge and monitoring; and (h) limitations of existing research and future directions.

Family relationships play an essential role in adolescent development. When studying relationship domains (e.g., quality, conflict, communication), researchers typically rely on adolescents and their parents as informants. However, across research teams, domains, and methods of measurement, researchers commonly observe discrepant estimates of family relationships between informants’ reports. In this article, we review theoretical models for understanding these discrepant reports, summarize research on how the degree of discrepancy between reports informs our understanding of adolescent development, and highlight directions for research.

Assessing youth psychopathology involves collecting multiple informants’ reports. Yet multi-informant reports often disagree, which necessitates integrative strategies that optimize predictive power. The trait-score approach leverages principal components analysis to account for the context and perspective from which informants provide reports. This approach may boost the predictive power of multi-informant reports and thus warrants rigorous testing. We tested the trait score approach using multi-informant reports of adolescent social anxiety in a mixed clinical and community sample of adolescents ( N = 127). The trait score incrementally predicted observed social anxiety (βs = 0.47–0.67) and referral status (odds ratios = 2.66–6.53) above and beyond individual informants’ reports and a composite of informants’ reports. The trait score predicted observed behavior at magnitudes well above those typically observed for individual informants’ reports of internalizing psychopathology (i.e., rs = .01–.15). Findings demonstrate the ability of the trait score to improve prediction of clinical indices and potentially transform widely used practices in multi-informant assessments.

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