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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