Maternal current smoking: concordance between adolescent proxy and mother's self-report.

INTRODUCTION: The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which adolescent reports on mother's smoking status and mother's self-reports on smoking are concordant with one another.
METHODS: Mothers self-reported on their smoking at two timepoints (first query and second query), while the adolescents reported on their mother's smoking status at one timepoint. Kappa values and percent exact agreement as well as sensitivity and specificity were calculated to examine the degree of agreement between child and mother's reports at the two timepoints.
RESULTS: Overall, the results indicated good concordance between mothers' self-reports and adolescent reports on smoking. Specifically, higher concordance was observed for mother's first query compared with mother's second query (Kappa = 0.69 vs. Kappa = 0.51). Younger adolescents and girls provided more concordant reports than older adolescents and boys. DISCUSSION: The results indicate that adolescent reports on mothers' smoking behavior can be used as a proxy to obtain data if mothers' self-report data are not available. Our results further suggest that when reports are not collected concurrently, self-report data obtained from the mothers prior to the proxy report obtained from her adolescent may be more reliable than the other way around.