Parent-youth discrepancies in ratings of youth victimization: associations with psychological adjustment.

This study extends research examining the implications of parent-youth informant discrepancies on youth victimization. Latent class analysis (LCA) identified dyads distinguished by patterns of parent and youth report of victimization. Analyses examined how latent classes were related to adjustment (i.e., anxiety/depression, aggression, and delinquency) concurrently and at follow-up assessment (~2.5 years) in a socioeconomically and ethnically diverse sample. Participants were 485 youths (58.1% male; M age = 12.83 years, SD = 1.60) and their primary caregivers from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. This study compared three classes of youths: (a) Parent > Youth (24.0%), (b) Youth > Parent (21.5%), and (c) Relative Agreement (54.5%). Findings did not support the hypothesis that groups reflecting parental underreporting of youth victimization experiences would show poor adjustment relative to all other classes longitudinally. Surprisingly, youths who self-reported lower levels of victimization than parents reported were at risk for maladjustment over time. This type of discrepant dyad may deserve more careful attention than previously considered in the literature.