Poster #47 - Informant Discrepancies Across Gender Dyads

• In Event: Poster Session 19

Abstract

Parental warmth is widely considered a protective factor, given consistent links with indicators of positive functioning (e.g., Daniel et al., 2016) and lower rates of problem behaviors and mental health concerns (Clayborne et al., 2020). Yet, parents and youth often disagree on the extent to which the family climate is supportive. Extant work suggests that discrepancies between parent and youth reports of family functioning are more than simple error, it reflects a substantive construct with meaningful implications for developmental outcomes (De Los Reyes & Ohannessian, 2016). Indeed, youth who perceive family interactions less positively than parents are more likely to exhibit negative outcomes (e.g., Hou et al., 2017), particularly for girls
Although recent works point to child gender as a possible moderator of these associations, less work has considered how gender effects may manifest at the dyadic level. Thus, the aim of the study is to examine whether associations between internalizing problems and parent-child rating discrepancies of parental warmth differ across both parent and child gender. Response surface analysis (RSA) is well-suited to examining these aims as RSA uses polynomial regression to create a three-dimensional representation of associations between all possible combinations of pairs of informant reports and a third variable. By examining congruence between self- and other-report, RSA analyses can provide insights into gender differences in the association between discrepancies in parental warmth and youth internalizing problems.
Data came from Wave 1 of the Iowa Youth and Families study, a publicly accessible dataset of 451 7th graders (female = 52.3%) and both their mother and father. Using RSA, we examined associations between internalizing problems and discrepancies in youth and parent reports of parental warmth across four sets of dyads (i.e., mother-daughter, mother-son, father-daughter, father-son). Results from RSA analyses (see Table 1 and Figure 1) indicated that internalizing problems were greater when mother-daughter dyads and father-son dyads matched at lower levels than at higher levels. Internalizing problems were greater when father-daughter dyads matched at lower levels than at higher levels, and when fathers rated their own parental warmth as higher than daughters, and the more that fathers and daughters deviated from one another. We found no links between internalizing problems and father-son discrepancies in reports of father’s warmth.
Findings contribute to ongoing scholarship on informant discrepancies, emphasizing the importance of understanding gender differences at the dyadic level. Consistent with prior work, we found stronger links between parenting discrepancies and internalizing problems for girls (e.g., Khaleque, 2012; Tambelli et al., 2012). Our results extend past work by highlighting the unique role of fathers and, in particular, the role of the father-daughter relationship in mental health. Continued theoretical and empirical work is needed to explicate the contribution of fathers to family dynamics and functioning.

Authors

• Yuliya Black, Utah Valley University
  Presenting Author

• Andrew Marshall, Utah Valley University

• Jennifer C. Shubert, Utah Valley University