Child and parent perceptions of children's psychopathology in psychiatric outpatient children

This study investigated the clinical utility of multitrait-multimethod assessments of internalizing and externalizing symptoms in child psychiatric outpatients. Mothers tended to rate all symptoms of psychopathology at higher levels of severity than their children. In contrast to studies of inpatients, much stronger convergent validity of child and mother ratings was obtained. Overall, findings yielded little evidence of discriminant validity, although mothers appeared better able to discriminate between internal and external symptomatology than their children. Methodological and theoretical explanations of these findings are discussed.