Parent, teacher and self-reports as predictors of signs of disturbance in adolescents: whose information carries the most weight?

We evaluated the ability of parents, teachers and self-reports to predict signs of maladjustment in 353 11- to 14-year-olds from the general population, over a 4-year time interval. Odds ratios were computed in order to test the ability of problem scales to predict later mental health referral and measures of parents' and children's own perceptions of the existence of major problems. Each informant made its own unique and indispensable contribution to the prediction of signs of maladjustment. Although teachers are often perceived as less able to assess internalizing problems than mothers and the children themselves, the present study showed that teachers' evaluations of internalizing problems are highly relevant if we take their ability to predict the subject's own perceptions of having problems as the criterion.