Abstract
Parents' ability to make reliable and valid reports about health service utilization is a key research design consideration for studies about the unmet needs of children and adolescents with emotional or behavioral problems. This research report addresses the validity of parents' reports, in particular, parents' rates of false-negative reporting about their children's mental health service use. Our findings show that only a few parents of known service users fail to report that their child or adolescent has received services for an emotional or behavioral problem. However, when parents are asked to report about their child's service use with specific providers or in specific service settings, the rate of false-negative reporting tends to increase, and in some circumstances this increase is dramatic. Logistic regression results indicate that false-negative reporting is more likely to occur among parents whose children are male, less frequent service users, or service users whose use is less recent. After controlling for these factors, we did not find a significant difference in the rate of false-negative reporting for parents of Anglo and Latino children. Implications for research designs and survey instruments are discussed.
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Bean, D.L., Leibowitz, A., Rotheram-Borus, M.J. et al. False-Negative Reporting and Mental Health Services Utilization: Parents' Reports About Child and Adolescent Services. Ment Health Serv Res 2, 239–249 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010116604540
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010116604540