Reliability and diagnostic efficacy of parents' reports regarding children's exposure to marital aggression

Mothers, fathers, and 8- to 11-year-old children from 181 two-parent families independently reported on the occurrence of husband-to-wife physical aggression and wife-to-husband physical aggression; parents additionally indicated whether the child had been witness to the aggression. First this study examined interspousal agreement regarding whether parents have been physically aggressive toward one another and whether the child has witnessed interparental physical aggression. There was moderate agreement between parents as to the occurrence of physical aggression and only fair agreement as to whether the child saw or heard the aggression. Second, this study explored the diagnosticity of a joint parent report as an indicator of child exposure to marital aggression. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves are presented separately for husbands' and wives' aggression, indicating the explicit trade-off between true positives (sensitivity) and false positives (one minus specificity) in using the joint parent report as a diagnostic indicator. Standard ROC analysis suggests that the joint parent report is equally diagnostic in predicting children's reports of exposure to husbands' and wives' aggression. Finally, decisions regarding how to use parent reports as an indicator of children's exposure to marital aggression are discussed as depending on the base rate of child reports of exposure and the objective sought in classifying children and/or families.