The role of self-regulation in the informant discrepancies in assessing children's psychological problems

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between informant discrepancies of children's psychological problems and self-regulation of children. A total of 418 elementary school students participated in this study and completed a questionnaire assessing their self-regulation. Psychological problems were assessed by the participants' parents and teachers. Using cluster analyses, the groups with greater and lower levels of self-regulation were defined. Correlation analyses and Fishers' z test were conducted to calculate the consensus of the parent and teacher ratings and compare the differences in their consensus between groups with greater and lower level of self-regulation. The results showed that the informant discrepancies were greater in the group with a higher level of self-regulation than in the group with a lower level of self-regulation. Subsequently, the same procedure was performed with subgroups that were distinguished by the severity of problems measured by CBCL and TRF, respectively. The subsequent analyses with the groups experiencing greater severity defined by CBCL or TRF failed to find significant correlation between CBCL and TRF regardless of the level of self-regulation. However, the analyses performed with the groups having less severe problems on the ratings of CBCL or TRF indicated possible interaction effect between the rating type used to define the problem severity and the level of self-regulation on CBCL-TRF correlation. The implications and limitations were discussed.