1 Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA.
Child Maltreat. 2018 Aug;23(3):294-302. doi: 10.1177/1077559518769375. Epub 2018 Apr 17.
It is not uncommon for caregivers and adolescents to provide different perspectives of adolescents' mental health symptoms; however, few studies have examined these discrepancies, especially between foster parents and adolescents in the child welfare system. The goal of this study was to investigate the levels of disagreement on adolescent mental health symptoms among caregivers and adolescents in foster care, to examine factors associated with caregiver-adolescent discrepancies, and the potential moderating role of caregiver-child closeness on the link between the length of time the youth lived with caregivers and discrepancies regarding adolescent mental health symptoms. These research questions were examined using two measures of adolescent-caregiver disagreement, intraclass correlations and discrepancy scores, using data from a nationally representative study of youth involved with the child welfare system. Analyses of 183 adolescent-caregiver dyads revealed caregiver-adolescent disagreement on adolescents' internalizing and externalizing symptoms, with caregivers reporting higher levels of adolescents' problems on average. Adolescent gender, type of maltreatment experienced, and placement type were associated with caregiver-adolescent discrepancies. Results also indicated that closeness with caregivers significantly moderated the relationship between the length of time adolescents lived with their caregivers and discrepancies on adolescent externalizing symptoms.
照料者和青少年对青少年心理健康症状的看法往往存在差异；然而，很少有研究调查这些差异，尤其是在寄养父母和儿童福利系统中的青少年之间。本研究的目的是调查寄养中的照料者和青少年在青少年心理健康症状方面的分歧程度，探讨与照料者-青少年差异相关的因素，以及青少年与照料者之间的亲密程度对青年与照料者共同生活时间与青少年心理健康症状差异之间关系的潜在调节作用。这些研究问题是使用青少年-照料者分歧的两个度量标准，即组内相关系数和差异分数，使用来自全国范围内参与儿童福利系统的青年的代表性研究数据进行研究的。对 183 个青少年-照料者对进行的分析表明，青少年的内化和外化症状存在照料者-青少年的分歧，平均而言，照料者报告的青少年问题水平较高。青少年的性别、经历的虐待类型和安置类型与照料者-青少年的差异有关。结果还表明，与照料者的亲密程度显著调节了青少年与照料者共同生活时间与青少年外化症状差异之间的关系。
