Parenting, Gender, and Race: Effects on Correspondence of Parent-Child Event Reporting

• In Event: The ABCD-Social Development Study: Current Findings

Abstract

Children and parents don’t always have the same knowledge or memory of events, including juvenile delinquency and victimization. Further, even if they are both aware, they don’t always have the same perception of events. In contemporary criminological research it is common practice for self-reported measures administered to children and adolescents to also be administered to their caregivers, to ensure the most complete and accurate data collection.

The current study reviews a previous analysis of parent-child agreement on delinquency and victimization surveys in relation to parenting style as measured by the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire, and adds the child’s gender and race to examine their potential as covariates. Results show that high levels of positive parenting strategies, for example, were found to be only weakly associated with high rates of agreement between parents and children across the sample, so including race and gender analyses brings this dataset into a better position for future use in the modern literature. These results highlight the need to utilize multiple informants in the study of juvenile delinquency and victimization to best estimate true prevalences. Alternative explanations for this discrepancy are discussed together with the important role of natural adolescent development and gradual detachment from caregivers.

Author

• Lia Ahonen, University of Pittsburgh