Parent-Child Agreement of Child Health-Related Quality-of-Life in Maltreated Children

This article examines the differences between self-reports and parent-proxy reports of pediatric health-related quality of life among families receiving child welfare services for child physical abuse and neglect. This study assesses child well-being using a pediatric health-related quality of life measure (Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory; PedsQL 4.0) with parent-child dyads (N = 129). Child and parent reports are compared for total and domain score on the PedsQL. Child-reported scores are lower than parent-proxy reports on total and all domain scores. For the total score, 57 % of child reports are below the clinical cutoff for poor well-being compared with 19 % of parent proxy reports. Analyses indicate poor agreement between parent and child reports, with this disagreement associated with high parent anger and parental self-report of poor mental health. Fully assessing child health and well-being requires multiple perspectives of child well-being. Gaining information from both the child and the parent provides different but equally useful information.