Exposure to violence and child behavior: Parent vs. child reports

Young children have significant rates of exposure to violence. In urban settings, the rate of violence exposure is reported as high as 80% (Mrug, et al., 2008). During pediatric visits, parents are frequently relied upon for history of their child's social risk exposure and behavior problems. This study examined 1) the correlations between parents' reports of their child's violence exposure and problem behaviors and child's self report and 2) the sensitivity and specificity of the parent's reports of child's report of behavior problems. The study participants included 409, primarily African American (86%), 3rd-5th graders, mean age 9.6 years (+ 1.1) from an urban setting. The Children's Report of Exposure to Violence (CREV; Cooley, Turner and Beidel, 1995), Multicultural Events Schedule for Adolescents (MESA; Gonzales, et al., 1995), Youth Self Report (YSR; Achenbach & Dumenci, 2001), and Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1991a) were used to identify violence and interpersonal stress exposure and behavior problems. There were no statistically significant correlations between parent's report of child's violence exposure and child's self report of violence exposure. Correlations between parent's report of child behavior problems and child self-report of behaviors were also not statistically significant. Using parent reports of their children's exposure to violence to predict clinically significant internalizing, externalizing, and total behaviors yielded poor sensitivity (14-32%) and moderate to good specificity (74-91%) when children's reports were used as a reference. Relying solely on parent reports in elementary school-aged children may result in under-identification of clinically significant behavior problems.