Psychometric properties of parents and children as informants in child psychiatry epidemiology with the Spanish diagnostic interview schedule for children (DISC.2)

Parent and child reports were examined to study how epidemiological researchers can best use the information provided to describe childhood psychopathology. As part of a multisite methodologic study of mental disorders in children, a probability sample (N=248) of children aged 9 to 17 years from the San Juan metropolitan area was selected. This sample was enriched with 74 clinic cases. Both parents and children were administered the DISC.2. Results showed that prevalence estimates were influenced by the informant. The clinicians' diagnosis is more concordant with children's reports of depression and with parents' reports of disruptive disorders. Parents and children provided unique information when interviewed with a structured psychiatric interview about child psychopathology. Their unique perspectives contributed to the observed discordance that emerged when DISC parent and DISC child results are compared. Combining the two perspectives with a simple OR rule at the symptom level did not seem to capture the unique perspectives.We acknowledge the research group of the Behavioral Sciences Research Institute for their valuable contributions to this work. We also recognize José V. Martínez, Vivian E. Febo, and Zenaida González for the data analyses, and Elizabeth Pastrana and Felícita Laboy for the secretarial work.This research was supported by grants (MH46732) from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) as part of a collaborative methodologic epidemiologic study of children and adolescents (MECA) between the Universities of Columbia, Emory, Puerto Rico, Yale, and the NIMH.