Parent-Adolescent Informant Discrepancies and Clinician Alignment: Implications for the Assessment of Adolescent Social Anxiety Disorder

ABSTRACTThe present study had the following aims: 1) Evaluate the degree of discrepancy between parents and their adolescents when reporting social anxiety; 2) Determine if reporting discrepancies between parents and adolescents predict social anxiety severity and impairment ratings following treatment and; 3) Assess if clinician-rated social anxiety severity more strongly aligns with parent- or adolescent-reported social anxiety. Participants included 58 adolescents (12–16 years of age; Mage = 14.29, SD = 1.30; 70.7% female) who participated in a randomized clinical trial. Participants and their parents separately completed the diagnostic interview and self-report measures regarding social anxiety. Results indicate significant parent-adolescent discrepancies regarding the adolescent’s social anxiety; however, parent and adolescent discrepancies were lower on specific feared social situations. Additionally, results demonstrate that correspondence in parent-adolescent reporting was associated with improved treatment outcomes. Lastly, results indicate that clinicians more strongly aligned themselves with parental report of social anxiety. AcknowledgmentsWe would like to acknowledge the graduate students, research assistants, and undergraduate students who assisted us with various aspects of this project. We also wish to express appreciation to the adolescents and families who participated in this clinical research.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Data availability statementData is available upon request. We report how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions, all manipulations, and all measures in the study.Statement of human rightsThis study received approval from the Virginia Tech’s Institutional Review Board, and all participants provided informed consent to participant in the study.Notes1 In the original RCT (Ollendick et al., Citation2019) in addition to the above-mentioned age range, inclusion criteria for the original study included: (1) a diagnosis of SAD via clinical interview; (2) an FSIQ of 80+; (3) stable psychotropic medication and; (4) no current treatment for social-anxiety related difficulties.