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Web End = J Youth Adolescence (2016) 45:19571972 DOI 10.1007/s10964-016-0533-z
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10964-016-0533-z&domain=pdf
Web End = EDITORIAL
Introduction to the Special Issue: Discrepancies in Adolescent Parent Perceptions of the Family and Adolescent Adjustment
Andres De Los Reyes1 Christine McCauley Ohannessian2,3
Received: 18 June 2016 / Accepted: 22 June 2016 / Published online: 6 July 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract Researchers commonly rely on adolescents and parents reports to assess family functioning (e.g., conict, parental monitoring, parenting practices, relationship quality). Recent work indicates that these reports may vary as to whether they converge or diverge in estimates of family functioning. Further, patterns of converging or diverging reports may yield important information about adolescent adjustment and family functioning. This work is part of a larger literature seeking to understand and interpret multi-informant assessments of psychological phenomena, namely mental health. In fact, recent innovations in conceptualizing, measuring, and analyzing multi-informant mental health assessments might meaningfully inform efforts to understand multi-informant assessments of family functioning. Therefore, in this Special Issue we address three aims. First, we provide a guiding framework for using and interpreting multi-informant assessments of family functioning, informed by recent theoretical work focused on using and interpreting multi-informant mental health assessments. Second, we report research on adolescents and parents reports of family functioning that leverages the latest methods for measuring and analyzing patterns of convergence and divergence between informants reports. Third, we report research on measurement invariance and its role in interpreting adolescents and
parents reports of family functioning. Research and theory reported in this Special Issue have important implications for improving our understanding of the links between multi-informant assessments of family functioning and adolescent adjustment.
Keywords Family Informant discrepancies Multiple
informants Operations Triad Model Parenting
Introduction
Adolescents lead complex lives. Relative to earlier developmental periods, adolescence can be characterized by an expansion in exposure to social contexts that may pose risk for or buffer against the development and maintenance of psychosocial maladjustment (e.g., Paus et al. 2008; Smetana et al. 2006; Steinberg 2005). One social context in which this is most readily apparent is the family. For example, as adolescents progress from the early through mid-to-late adolescent periods, frequencies of conict interactions with parents remain stable, and yet normatively the intensity of this conict...
