- Title
- Are foster parents reliable informants of children's behaviour problems?
- Creator
- Tarren-Sweeney, M. J.; Hazell, P. L.; Carr, V. J.
- Relation
- Child: Care, Health and Development Vol. 30, Issue 2, p. 167-175
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2214.2003.00407.x
- Publisher
- Blackwell Publishing Ltd
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2004
- Description
- Background: Clinicians and researchers primarily measure behavioural and emotional problems of children in foster care from carer-report checklists. Yet the reliability of these reports is not adequately established. The present study examines one indicator of reliability for foster parent checklist reports: interrater agreement between foster parents and teachers. Methods: Estimates of interrater agreement of foster parent and teacher responses on the cross-informant scales of the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL) and the Teacher Report Form (TRF) were obtained for 47 children in long-term foster care, aged 5–11 years. The estimates included calculations of agreement for continuous measures of problem behaviour, as well as for categorical determinations of clinically significant behaviour. Results: Correlations of CBCL and TRF mean raw scores for the total problems (r = 0.71) and externalizing (r = 0.78) scales exceeded those described in prior studies of parent–teacher agreement, while correlation for internalizing scores (r = 0.23) was similar to that found previously. Teachers and foster parents demonstrated moderate to good agreement (kappa = 0.70–0.79) in identifying clinically significant total problems and externalizing problems, but poor agreement in identifying internalizing problems. Conclusions: Discrepancies between these and prior findings are discussed. For children in long-term foster care, foster parents or teachers may be used as informants for total problems, externalizing problems, and social-attention-thought problems. The reliability of data on internalizing symptoms is less certain.
- Subject
- foster parents; foster care; reliability; inter-rater agreement; Child Behaviour Checklist
- Identifier
- uon:1808
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/27574
- Identifier
- ISSN:0305-1862
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