Does Mother (Father) Know Best?  An Assessment of Parent/Child Agreement in the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth
 
Martin Dooley    McMaster University
 
Child health and well-being are currently high on the policy agenda. Data used in research to inform policies directed at improving child health and well-being have tended to come from surveys in which only adults, especially parents, are interviewed such as the Ontario Child Health Study. The goal of improving the current well-being of the children implies that we should ask questions directly of at least the older children. In Cycle One of the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY), a subset of child outcome questions were asked of both the 10 and 11 year-old children and their parents.
 
The specific goals of this research is to use Cycle One of NLSCY to do the following:
i. Determine the extent of agreement between parents and children concerning child outcomes.
ii. Determine if the two sets of outcome measure have similar empirical links with the most commonly-used socioeconomic correlates of child well-being, such as, low income and lone parenthood.
iii. Assess potential reasons for any observed differences in 1 or 2 above.

Previous studies have been mostly clinical studies of small, non-random samples of parents and children who sought medical advice and assistance.  The focus has been on obtaining a diagnostic consensus rather than on the socioeconomic correlates of child outcomes. We can generally find higher level of agreement than that found in the NLSCY

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