How Accurate Are Parental Reports Regarding Children’s Emotional States?

One of the most common methods for assessing the behavioral and emotional state of a child is a parental report. This type of evaluation usually comprises a parent’s observation and evaluation of the child’s feelings, mood states, and behaviors over a period of time. But just how accurately do parents gauge the emotional temperature of their children? That was the question at the center of a recent study conducted by C. Emily Durbin of the Department of Psychology at Michigan State University. Because parental reports can vary quite dramatically from reports obtained by other observers, such as teachers, counselors, and classmates, Durbin wanted to determine what factors, if any, skewed parents’ perceptions.

Durbin chose to focus on the effects of maternal depression on parental reports. She based her decision on the fact that other conditions, such as alcoholism, parental anxiety, and family distress, have been shown to influence maternal reports. Durbin extended the existing research and compared mothers’ reports with those of unbiased observers on a sample of 190 children ranging from 3 to 6 years old. Participants were instructed to rate levels of sadness, fear, happiness, surprise, and anger in the children after they completed 10 emotion-inducing tasks. Durbin found that the mothers with a history of depression or anxiety tended to rate their children as less happy than mothers with no such history. Additionally, these same mothers viewed their children as overly fearful, and rated girls as sadder than boys. This could be a result of maternal sensitivity to emotions such as fear and sadness. However, the outcome showed a significant disparity between observers’ ratings and those of the mothers with a psychological history. “These mothers may have greater difficulty setting aside their perceptions of the child’s typical emotional adjustment to focus solely on rating the behavior the child is currently exhibiting,” Durbin said. Although the sample size was limited to young children and did not contain a large number of mothers currently exhibiting depressive symptoms, the results warrant further investigation. Durbin believes it is essential to expand this research to include older children, comparison to other assessment tools, and evaluation of other aspects of childhood development.

Reference:
Durbin, C. Emily, and Sylvia Wilson. Convergent validity of and bias in maternal reports of child emotion. Psychological Assessment 24.3 (2012): 647-60. Print.

© Copyright 2012 GoodTherapy.org. All rights reserved.

The preceding article was solely written by the author named above. Any views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the preceding article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment below.

  • 11 comments
  • Leave a Comment
  • erica

    September 26th, 2012 at 11:44 PM

    the clinicians would obviously view the reporting from an alcoholic parent with suspicion but they wouldn’t do the same for a depressed parent now would they? Just goes to show how clinicians should not totally rely on parental reporting.

  • Jim G

    September 27th, 2012 at 3:55 AM

    I do not agree that the best reporting could come from parents. I don’t think that I would be the best judge of my child’s emotional state simply because of how involved I am going to get into it. I think that a better judge would be teachers who are with my child all school day, and even counselors that he or she may have been seeing. I have a hard time with thinking that most parents could be all that objective when it comes to looking at their own children because if you are like me I have a habit of always seeing them only through rose colored glasses.

  • TODD

    September 27th, 2012 at 5:21 AM

    I’d say its never a good idea to consider parental reports when it comes to children’s emotional states.Although it is the parents that get the most time to observe there children,they are not really trained professionals for this and just the fact that it is their child may have an influence in their perception.A professional is always a better route.

show more comments

Leave a Comment

By commenting you acknowledge acceptance of GoodTherapy.org's Terms and Conditions of Use.

 

* Indicates required field.

GoodTherapy uses cookies to personalize content and ads to provide better services for our users and to analyze our traffic. By continuing to use this site you consent to our cookies.