Author(s)

Wolfgang Schulz^1*, Janne Cornelius¹, Donald H. Baucom², Kurt Hahlweg¹

¹Institut für Psychologie, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany.
²Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, UNC Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.

Background: Given the need to consider different assessors’ perspectives in research on child and adolescent developmental psychopathology and the underrepresentation of fathers in that area, this 10-year longitudinal study examines adolescents with resilient and maladaptive development from the perspectives of their mothers and fathers as well as the adolescents themselves. Objective: The central aim of this study is to compare the results depending on the assessor’s perspective. Methods: The study sample consists of N = 343 children who were examined first in kindergarten (age M = 4 years) and then 10 years later in adolescence. Results: At measurement time pre, 24% of the children belonged to the group with early childhood developmental risks; 61% of these showed resilient development over 10 years from the mothers’ perspective; 68% were resilient from the fathers’ perspective, and 62% from the adolescents’ own perspective. The agreement between mother and father ratings was good (κ = 0.63), whereas agreement between adolescents and their parents was low (mother: κ = 0.30, father: κ = 0.33). Across the three raters’ perspectives, differences between the resilient and maladaptive adolescents were found in 60% of the longitudinal prognostic characteristics, demonstrating at least small effects. The results differed depending on the perspective of the rater. Conclusions: To avoid a rater bias in developmental psychopathology research, different perspectives are needed, especially those of the mother, father and, as far as possible, also those of the children or adolescents.

Resilience, Risk and Protective Factors, Maternal and Paternal Perspectives, Longitudinal and Cross-Sectional Study

Schulz, W. , Cornelius, J. , Baucom, D. and Hahlweg, K. (2022) Resilient Child Development Trajectories over 10 Years—A Comparison of Mothers’, Fathers’, and Adolescents’ Perspectives. Psychology, 13, 1173-1195. doi: 10.4236/psych.2022.138077.