Iheukwumere N.1,2, Basu A.1, Mccoll E.1, Pennington L.1
1Newcastle University, Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom, 2Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Medical Rehabilitation, Nnewi Campus, Nigeria
Background: Approximately 10% of all British children and adolescents have psychological difficulties that result in considerable distress or social disturbance. Previous studies involving subjective wellbeing have relied on proxy-reports. However, inconsistences in parent and child/ young people's reports have been observed in these studies.
Purpose: Children with Cerebral Palsy have more psychological difficulties than other children in the general population yet report the same Quality of Life (QoL). Although self-report is considered as an ideal method of assessing psychological difficulties, this may not be obtainable in children and adolescents who may lack the necessary skills required to complete these measures. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between self-reported and parental ratings of the psychological difficulties in adolescence.
Methods: A total of 415 children and their parents were involved in this study. The age range of these children were 13-17 years. These children were sampled from nine population based Cerebral Palsy registers covering the north of England, west Sweden, Northern Ireland, Isere County in south-east France, south-west Ireland, east Denmark, central Italy, Haute Garonne County in south-west France and Northern Germany. Severity of psychological disorder was measured using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). The Spearman rank correlation (rho) and the coefficient of determination (r2) were calculated to check for association between parent and adolescent scores of the SDQ. The Intra class Correlation (ICC) was calculated to examine whether agreement exists between the two ratings and the Wilcoxon matched paired test was also used to ascertain the mean directional differences between the parents and adolescents SDQ scores.
Results: Results showed that the calculated rho was 0.39 whilst the r2 value was 0.138 which indicated that a weak to moderate positive relationship between the two types of reports. The ICC values for the Emotional, Hyperactivity and Prosocial subscales were within the range (0.20-0.59), while the Peer and Conduct problem subscales had the lowest range (0.1-0.2). These ranges corresponded with the rho and r2 results. The Wilcoxon matched pairs test (Z=-3.21; p=0.001) revealed that a total of 220 parents (53%) scored the psychological difficulties of their adolescent child higher than the adolescents scored it, 163 adolescents (39%) scored themselves higher than did their parent and in 32 parent-child dyads (8%) parents and adolescents reported the same scores.
Conclusion(s): Parents rated their male adolescents problems worse than the boys do themselves. Whilst there was no difference in parental and female adolescents ratings. However, in practice this finding is not entirely so as there other factors such as the childs age, gender or health status have been reported to influence parent-child agreement scores.
Implications: Children/adolescents living with Cerebral Palsy have more psychological difficulties than their peers. Previous studies have reported such factors as the age, gender of the child, type of cerebral palsy, presence of associated impairments like seizures, communication and intellectual impairments, influence the level of parent-child agreement scores. Therefore it is vital for researchers and clinicians to thoroughly investigate these factors in studies or interventions that would involve parent- child reports.
Funding acknowledgements: The second phase of the SPARCLE study was funded by the Wellcome Trust WT 086315 A1A.
Topic: Health promotion & wellbeing/healthy ageing
Ethics approval: Ethical approval for this research work was obtained from the Newcastle & North Tyneside 1 with reference number 09/H0906/4.
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
