Concordance in Child-Parent Reporting of Social Victimization Experiences in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study

Objective

To investigate child-parent concordance in reporting social victimization experiences and whether parent concordance with child report of victimization was associated with child behavioral symptoms.

Methods

This was an observational study with data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Social Development (ABCD-SD) substudy. The analytic sample was 2415 pre-adolescent children from the United States. We assessed parent-child concordance on six domains of child social victimization: conventional crime, peer victimization, witnessing violence, internet victimization, school victimization, and gun violence. Child behavior symptoms were measured using the parent-report Child Behavior Checklist. Interrater agreement and multiple linear and logistic regression analyses were conducted to assess parent concordance with child report of victimization and its relationship to behavioral symptoms.

Results

Interrater agreement in parent-child social victimizations reports was low, with Cohen’s Kappa values ranging from 0.10 to 0.23. Compared to parent-child dyads in which neither reported victimization, parent concordance with child report of victimization across multiple domains of social victimization was associated with more internalizing/externalizing behaviors, as was parent discordance with child reports that did not indicate victimization. Among children who reported victimization, parents’ perceptions of greater neighborhood safety were associated with lower odds of concordant parent report of conventional crime (OR = 0.94, 95% CI = 0.90–0.98) and witnessing violence (OR = 0.94, 95% CI-0.89–0.98).

Conclusions

Parents and children do not necessarily agree in reporting social victimization experiences. Parent reports of child social victimization, whether they were concordant with positive child reports or discordant with negative child reports, were associated with parent reports of behavioral symptoms and thus may be an indicator of the severity of experiences, underscoring the need to consider multiple informants when screening for adversity.