TITLE:
Resilient Child Development Trajectories over 10 Years—A Comparison of Mothers’, Fathers’, and Adolescents’ Perspectives
AUTHORS:
Wolfgang Schulz, Janne Cornelius, Donald H. Baucom, Kurt Hahlweg
KEYWORDS:
Resilience, Risk and Protective Factors, Maternal and Paternal Perspectives, Longitudinal and Cross-Sectional Study
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.13 No.8,
August
15,
2022
ABSTRACT: Background: Given the need to consider different assessors’ perspectives in research on child and adolescent developmental psychopathology and the underrepresentation of fathers in that area, this 10-year longitudinal study examines adolescents with resilient and maladaptive development from the perspectives of their mothers and fathers as well as the adolescents themselves. Objective: The central aim of this study is to compare the results depending on the assessor’s perspective. Methods: The study sample consists of N = 343 children who were examined first in kindergarten (age M = 4 years) and then 10 years later in adolescence. Results: At measurement time pre, 24% of the children belonged to the group with early childhood developmental risks; 61% of these showed resilient development over 10 years from the mothers’ perspective; 68% were resilient from the fathers’ perspective, and 62% from the adolescents’ own perspective. The agreement between mother and father ratings was good (κ = 0.63), whereas agreement between adolescents and their parents was low (mother: κ = 0.30, father: κ = 0.33). Across the three raters’ perspectives, differences between the resilient and maladaptive adolescents were found in 60% of the longitudinal prognostic characteristics, demonstrating at least small effects. The results differed depending on the perspective of the rater. Conclusions: To avoid a rater bias in developmental psychopathology research, different perspectives are needed, especially those of the mother, father and, as far as possible, also those of the children or adolescents.