De Los Reyes Andres, Wang Mo, Lerner Matthew D, Makol Bridget A, Fitzpatrick Olivia M, Weisz John R
Comprehensive Assessment and Intervention Program, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland.
Department of Management, University of Florida.
J Clin Child Adolesc Psychol. 2023 Jan-Feb;52(1):19-54. doi: 10.1080/15374416.2022.2111684. Epub 2022 Aug 30.
Researchers strategically assess youth mental health by soliciting reports from multiple informants. Typically, these informants (e.g., parents, teachers, youth themselves) vary in the social contexts where they observe youth. Decades of research reveal that the most common data conditions produced with this approach consist of discrepancies across informants' reports (i.e., ). Researchers should arguably treat these informant discrepancies as : data relevant to understanding youth mental health domains (e.g., anxiety, depression, aggression). Yet, historically, in youth mental health research as in many other research areas, one set of paradigms has guided interpretations of informant discrepancies: and the (). These paradigms (a) emphasize shared or observed in multivariate data, and (b) inspire research practices that treat (i.e., informant discrepancies) as , namely random error and/or rater biases. Several yearsw ago, the Operations Triad Model emerged to address a conceptual problem that Converging Operations does not address: Some informant discrepancies might reflect measurement confounds, whereas others reflect domain-relevant information. However, addressing this problem requires more than a conceptual paradigm shift beyond Converging Operations. This problem necessitates a paradigm shift in . We advance a paradigm (Classifying Observations Necessitates Theory, Epistemology, and Testing [CONTEXT]) that addresses problems with using the MTMM in youth mental health research. CONTEXT optimizes measurement validity by guiding researchers to leverage (a) informants that produce domain-relevant informant discrepancies, (b) analytic procedures that retain domain-relevant informant discrepancies, and (c) study designs that facilitate detecting domain-relevant informant discrepancies.
研究人员通过征求多位信息提供者的报告，对青少年心理健康进行策略性评估。通常，这些信息提供者（如父母、教师、青少年自身）观察青少年的社会背景各不相同。数十年的研究表明，这种方法产生的最常见数据情况是信息提供者报告之间存在差异（即 ）。研究人员可以说应该将这些信息提供者之间的差异视为 ：与理解青少年心理健康领域（如焦虑、抑郁、攻击性）相关的数据。然而，从历史上看，在青少年心理健康研究以及许多其他研究领域中，一套范式指导着对信息提供者差异的解释： 以及 （ ）。这些范式（a）强调在多变量数据中观察到的共享或 ，以及（b）激发将 （即信息提供者差异）视为 ，即随机误差和/或评分者偏差的研究实践。几年前，操作三元组模型出现，以解决聚合操作未解决的一个概念性问题：一些信息提供者差异可能反映测量混淆，而另一些则反映与领域相关的信息。然而，解决这个问题不仅需要超越聚合操作的概念范式转变。这个问题需要在 方面进行范式转变。我们提出了一种范式（分类观察需要理论、认识论和测试 [CONTEXT]），以解决在青少年心理健康研究中使用多特质多方法矩阵（MTMM）时出现的问题。CONTEXT 通过指导研究人员利用（a）产生与领域相关的信息提供者差异的信息提供者，（b）保留与领域相关的信息提供者差异的分析程序，以及（c）便于检测与领域相关的信息提供者差异的研究设计，来优化测量效度。
