Failure to identify maternal mood-state biases in reports of offspring emotional and behavioral problems

• In Event: Substantive Developmental Research Questions Addressed with Applied Measurement Methods

Abstract

Mood-state biases are frequently noted as study limitations when primary outcomes of emotional and behavioral problems in children are assessed with maternal-report measures. There have been some attempts to examine factors associated with inter-informant agreement, but these methods do not specifically examine biases in reports of child behavior. In this presentation, we directly examine the possibility that dimensions of maternal psychopathology are associated with biases in reports of behavior problems in their children. Based on previous concerns, we expected that maternal psychopathology would be associated with higher levels of behavior problems, after accounting for latent levels for behavior problems. Using data from baseline assessment of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study (n = 8507 mother-child dyads; youth aged 9-11 years), we examined how dimensions of maternal psychopathology, including internalizing problems, were associated with indices of bias in reports of their children’s dimensions of internalizing, externalizing, neurodevelopmental, detachment, somatoform psychopathology using moderated non-linear factor analysis. Moderated non-linear factor analyses examined multiple potential biases in maternal-reports of youth psychopathology. This approach distinguishes between biases in levels (i.e., intercepts) and slopes (i.e., factor loadings). Across analyses, we found very small magnitudes of associations between dimensions of maternal psychopathology and biases in reports of child emotional and behavioral problems (intercept bias range: .015-.036; slope bias range: .009-.034). There were no consistent patterns of prediction from dimensions of maternal psychopathology to dimension of child psychopathology. Based on these results, we find little psychometric evidence for maternal psychopathology biasing reports of child behavior problems. Thus, associations between maternal psychopathology and reports of their children’s behavior problems do not appear to be contaminated by biases due to mothers’ symptomatic state.

Authors

• Thomas M Olino, Temple University
  Presenting Author

• Giorgia Michelini, Stony Brook University Hospital
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rebekah Mennies, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author

• Roman Kotov, Stony Brook University Hospital
  Non-Presenting Author

• Daniel N Klein, Stony Brook University
  Non-Presenting Author