Mother–child disagreement in reports of child anxiety: Effects of child age and maternal anxiety

doi:10.1016/j.janxdis.2010.11.009

Journal of Anxiety Disorders

Volume 25, Issue 3, April 2011, Pages 450-455

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2010.11.009 Get rights and content

Abstract

The present study examined effects of maternal anxiety, child age, and their interaction on mother–child anxiety reporting disagreement while taking into account the direction of each informant's report relative to the other. Participants were 41 dyads of mothers and clinically anxious children aged 7–13. A hierarchical regression revealed a significant interaction between maternal anxiety and child age (β = .30, p < .05). A graph of this interaction indicated that when maternal anxiety is high and the child is older, maternal report of anxiety is relatively higher, and when maternal anxiety is high and the child is younger, child report of anxiety is relatively higher. When maternal anxiety is low, the reporting discrepancy is relatively stable across age. Results may help explain previous mixed findings regarding effects of age and maternal anxiety on reporting discrepancies. Possible explanations for these results are discussed.

Research highlights

▶ Reporting agreement is affected by interaction of child age and maternal anxiety. ▶ Anxious mothers underreport anxiety for younger child, over-report for older child. ▶ Non-anxious mothers display reporting agreement with child across child ages.

Section snippets

Parent–child reporting disagreement

A substantial body of research demonstrates low rates of concordance in endorsement of symptoms between children and other informants, such as parents and teachers (Bird et al., 1992, De Los Reyes and Kazdin, 2005, Klein, 1991, Reich and Earls, 1987). Studies comparing concordance between parent and child ratings of internalizing and externalizing disorders have generally demonstrated that agreement is lower for internalizing disorders (Achenbach et al., 1987, Salbach-Andrae et al., 2009), and

Participants

Participants were 41 dyads of mothers and children (23 females and 18 males) aged 7–13 years (M = 10.32; SD = 1.78) from ethnically diverse backgrounds (58.5% Latino, 19.5% African American, 12% Caucasian, 5% Other, 5% not reported). Children met criteria for a primary anxiety disorder diagnosis (Specific Phobia [SP], n = 10; Generalized Anxiety Disorder [GAD], n = 10; Social Phobia [SoP], n = 8; Separation Anxiety Disorder [SAD] n = 3; Posttraumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD], n = 4; Selective Mutism [SM] n = 1)

Preliminary analyses

Correlations between measures of socioeconomic status (SES) (mother's level of education and total household income) and reporting discrepancy were not statistically significant, and measures of SES were not included in subsequent analyses. Child gender was not correlated with any study variable and was not included in any further analysis. Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) indicated that child ethnicity did not significantly explain any study variable and was also not included in any further

Implications

These findings support our contentions that when examining factors affecting reporting discrepancies, rather than examining only the magnitude of the discrepancy, the direction of relative reporting of child anxiety between mothers and children (i.e., which informant is reporting more and which informant is reporting less anxiety) should be considered, and that potential interactions between factors shown to affect reporting discrepancies should be examined.

The finding of a significant

Acknowledgements

This research was supported in part by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (50R03MH076874-01 A2) and from the Newcomb College Institute, Tulane University to R. Enrique Varela.

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