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Parent-Adolescent Informant Discrepancies and Adolescent Adjustment Outcomes: A Directional Comparison and
Jiayi Ding1,2, Si Wen3
1Division of Applied Psychology, School of Humanities and Social Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, 518172, Guangdong, China.
Child Psychiatry and Human Development
|July 25, 2026
Summary
Parental over-reporting of adolescent problems, compared to adolescent over-reporting, is linked to better adjustment. Family dynamics like communication and closeness play a role in these associations for adolescent mental health and substance use.
Area of Science:
- Child and Adolescent Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
- Family Studies
Background:
- Parent-adolescent informant discrepancies are recognized in clinical settings but less understood in community samples.
- The relevance of discrepancy direction (parent vs. adolescent over-reporting) to adolescent adjustment and its link to family functioning requires further investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore associations between parent-overreporting versus adolescent-overreporting of internalizing and externalizing problems and adolescent adjustment.
- To investigate the role of family functioning indicators in these associations.
Main Methods:
- Utilized dyadic data from 1,696 parent-adolescent dyads in the UK Millennium Cohort Study (Wave 7).
- Employed structural equation modeling to analyze direct and indirect associations.
- Examined four family functioning indicators: communication, emotional closeness, parental knowledge, and parental control.
Main Results:
- Parent-overreporting was associated with more favorable adolescent adjustment, with domain-specific patterns.
- Internalizing-based parent-overreporting linked to fewer mental health issues; externalizing-based parent-overreporting linked to fewer mental health issues and reduced substance use.
- Family functioning, particularly communication and closeness, mediated associations with mental health; parental knowledge mediated substance use outcomes in externalizing discrepancies.
Conclusions:
- Discrepancy direction offers valuable adjustment-relevant information in community samples.
- The implications of discrepancies are domain-specific and influenced by family functioning.
- Findings support a domain-specific, relational interpretation of parent-adolescent discrepancies in adolescent psychological difficulties.
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