Parents' perception of adolescents' difficulties and impact of problems in different castes and ethnic groups in Nepal. Do they converge with the frequencies of symptoms reported on the child behavior checklist (CBCL)?
Sirjana Adhikari, Jasmine Ma, Suraj Shakya, Per Håkan Brøndbo, Bjørn Helge Handegård, Anne Cecilie Javo
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: Parents' perceptions of their children's behavior are culturally determined and may differ across cultures. The present study aimed to investigate parents' perceptions of adolescents' difficulties and the impact of problems in different cultural contexts in Nepal, and to explore the extent to which they align with child symptoms measured on a problem rating scale.
Methods: This study was conducted with parents of school-going adolescents in sixteen districts of Nepal. The Nepali version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)-Impact Supplement was used to assess parents' perception of difficulties and the impact of problems, and the Child Behavior Checklist/6-18 (CBCL) was used as a symptom rating scale. We employed a mixed model approach for data analysis to address the hierarchical structure of our data.
Results: Parents' perceptions of difficulties and the impact of problems did not differ between the Hindu "high caste", the Hindu "low caste" and the indigenous/ethnic minority group. In contrast, the effect of caste/ethnicity was significant for parent ratings on the CBCL Total Problems as the "low caste" parents reported higher mean scores than parents from the indigenous/ethnic minorities group. Parents' perception of difficulties and the impact of problems were moderately associated with their reports on the CBCL Total Problems. There was no moderating effect of caste/ethnicity on any of these associations.
Conclusion: Although cross-cultural differences emerged in parents' ratings of symptoms, no differences emerged in their perception of difficulties and the impact of problems. Moderate associations between the CBCL Total Problems and perceived difficulties and the impact of problems suggest that clinicians should consider using supplement measurements in their assessment of child behavior problems. However, further studies are required to confirm our findings.
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Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology is intended to provide a medium for the prompt publication of scientific contributions concerned with all aspects of the epidemiology of psychiatric disorders - social, biological and genetic.
In addition, the journal has a particular focus on the effects of social conditions upon behaviour and the relationship between psychiatric disorders and the social environment. Contributions may be of a clinical nature provided they relate to social issues, or they may deal with specialised investigations in the fields of social psychology, sociology, anthropology, epidemiology, health service research, health economies or public mental health. We will publish papers on cross-cultural and trans-cultural themes. We do not publish case studies or small case series. While we will publish studies of reliability and validity of new instruments of interest to our readership, we will not publish articles reporting on the performance of established instruments in translation.
Both original work and review articles may be submitted.
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