Comparisons of parent and adolescent perspectives on deviance.

This study investigated hospitalized adolescents (57 girls; 46 boys; mean age = 14 years, 8 months) and their fathers and mothers to ascertain the degree of correspondence (by gender of parent and child) on ratings of total symptoms and of internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. Parents (especially mothers) reported higher levels of symptom severity than their offspring; girls' ratings were more severe than boys'. Whereas interparent correspondence was essentially the same in ratings of daughters, mother-son convergence was generally higher than father-son correspondence. Boys and their parents did not differentiate internalizing from externalizing disorders; girls and parents were better able to discriminate between these types of psychopathology.