Parent, Teacher and Observational Reports of Emotional and Behavioral Problems in Young Autistic Children

Melanie Palmer; Joanne Tarver; Virginia Carter Leno; Juan Paris Perez; Margot Frayne; Vicky Slonims; Andrew Pickles; Stephen Scott; Tony Charman; Emily Simonoff

doi:10.1007/s10803-021-05421-x

Parent, Teacher and Observational Reports of Emotional and Behavioral Problems in Young Autistic Children

Melanie Palmer, Joanne Tarver, Virginia Carter Leno, Juan Paris Perez, Margot Frayne, Vicky Slonims, Andrew Pickles, Stephen Scott, Tony Charman, Emily Simonoff

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Emotional and behavioral problems (EBPs) frequently occur in young autistic children. Discrepancies between parents and other informants are common but can lead to uncertainty in formulation, diagnosis and care planning. This study aimed to explore child and informant characteristics are associated with reported child EBPs across settings. Participants were 83 4–8-year-old autistic children and their parents and teachers in the Autism Spectrum Treatment and Resilience (ASTAR) study. Questionnaires of child EBPs were completed by parents and teachers, and self-reported parenting stress and wellbeing measures were obtained. An observation of parent–child/researcher-child interaction was also completed. Parents reported more EBPs than teachers and parent-teacher agreement was low, particularly for emotional problems. Greater parenting stress and being verbal was associated with more parent- but not teacher-reported EBPs. More observed behaviors that challenge were displayed by minimally verbal children. More parenting stress could be associated with the presence of more EBPs in the home; alternatively, parenting stress may confound reports. It is essential for assessments of EBPs in autistic children to take a multi-informant approach. Better understanding of the associations between informant characteristics and informant discrepancies of EBPs is needed.

Original language	English
Journal	Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
Early online date	13 Jan 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05421-x
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 13 Jan 2022

Bibliographical note

(c) The Author(s), 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

This manuscript summarizes independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Programme Grants for Applied Research programme (RP-PG-1211–20016). The views expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health. AP and ES receives support from the NIHR through a Senior Investigator Award (NF-SI-0617–10120, NF-SI-0514–10073) and additionally receive support from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre at South London and Maudsley Foundation Trust (IS-BRC-1215–20018). VCL is supported by a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship (213608/Z/18/Z).

Keywords

Agreement
Autism
Child emotional and behavioral problems
Discrepancies
Informants

Access to Document

10.1007/s10803-021-05421-xLicence: CC BY 3.0

Parent, Teacher and Observational Reports
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Final published version, 829 KBLicence: CC BY 3.0

Cite this

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title = "Parent, Teacher and Observational Reports of Emotional and Behavioral Problems in Young Autistic Children",

abstract = "Emotional and behavioral problems (EBPs) frequently occur in young autistic children. Discrepancies between parents and other informants are common but can lead to uncertainty in formulation, diagnosis and care planning. This study aimed to explore child and informant characteristics are associated with reported child EBPs across settings. Participants were 83 4–8-year-old autistic children and their parents and teachers in the Autism Spectrum Treatment and Resilience (ASTAR) study. Questionnaires of child EBPs were completed by parents and teachers, and self-reported parenting stress and wellbeing measures were obtained. An observation of parent–child/researcher-child interaction was also completed. Parents reported more EBPs than teachers and parent-teacher agreement was low, particularly for emotional problems. Greater parenting stress and being verbal was associated with more parent- but not teacher-reported EBPs. More observed behaviors that challenge were displayed by minimally verbal children. More parenting stress could be associated with the presence of more EBPs in the home; alternatively, parenting stress may confound reports. It is essential for assessments of EBPs in autistic children to take a multi-informant approach. Better understanding of the associations between informant characteristics and informant discrepancies of EBPs is needed.",

keywords = "Agreement, Autism, Child emotional and behavioral problems, Discrepancies, Informants",

author = "Melanie Palmer and Joanne Tarver and Leno, {Virginia Carter} and Perez, {Juan Paris} and Margot Frayne and Vicky Slonims and Andrew Pickles and Stephen Scott and Tony Charman and Emily Simonoff",

note = "(c) The Author(s), 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. This manuscript summarizes independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Programme Grants for Applied Research programme (RP-PG-1211–20016). The views expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health. AP and ES receives support from the NIHR through a Senior Investigator Award (NF-SI-0617–10120, NF-SI-0514–10073) and additionally receive support from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre at South London and Maudsley Foundation Trust (IS-BRC-1215–20018). VCL is supported by a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship (213608/Z/18/Z).",

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month = jan,

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doi = "10.1007/s10803-021-05421-x",

language = "English",

journal = "Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders",

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AU - Leno, Virginia Carter

AU - Perez, Juan Paris

AU - Frayne, Margot

AU - Slonims, Vicky

AU - Pickles, Andrew

AU - Scott, Stephen

AU - Charman, Tony

AU - Simonoff, Emily

N1 - (c) The Author(s), 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. This manuscript summarizes independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Programme Grants for Applied Research programme (RP-PG-1211–20016). The views expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health. AP and ES receives support from the NIHR through a Senior Investigator Award (NF-SI-0617–10120, NF-SI-0514–10073) and additionally receive support from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre at South London and Maudsley Foundation Trust (IS-BRC-1215–20018). VCL is supported by a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship (213608/Z/18/Z).

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N2 - Emotional and behavioral problems (EBPs) frequently occur in young autistic children. Discrepancies between parents and other informants are common but can lead to uncertainty in formulation, diagnosis and care planning. This study aimed to explore child and informant characteristics are associated with reported child EBPs across settings. Participants were 83 4–8-year-old autistic children and their parents and teachers in the Autism Spectrum Treatment and Resilience (ASTAR) study. Questionnaires of child EBPs were completed by parents and teachers, and self-reported parenting stress and wellbeing measures were obtained. An observation of parent–child/researcher-child interaction was also completed. Parents reported more EBPs than teachers and parent-teacher agreement was low, particularly for emotional problems. Greater parenting stress and being verbal was associated with more parent- but not teacher-reported EBPs. More observed behaviors that challenge were displayed by minimally verbal children. More parenting stress could be associated with the presence of more EBPs in the home; alternatively, parenting stress may confound reports. It is essential for assessments of EBPs in autistic children to take a multi-informant approach. Better understanding of the associations between informant characteristics and informant discrepancies of EBPs is needed.

AB - Emotional and behavioral problems (EBPs) frequently occur in young autistic children. Discrepancies between parents and other informants are common but can lead to uncertainty in formulation, diagnosis and care planning. This study aimed to explore child and informant characteristics are associated with reported child EBPs across settings. Participants were 83 4–8-year-old autistic children and their parents and teachers in the Autism Spectrum Treatment and Resilience (ASTAR) study. Questionnaires of child EBPs were completed by parents and teachers, and self-reported parenting stress and wellbeing measures were obtained. An observation of parent–child/researcher-child interaction was also completed. Parents reported more EBPs than teachers and parent-teacher agreement was low, particularly for emotional problems. Greater parenting stress and being verbal was associated with more parent- but not teacher-reported EBPs. More observed behaviors that challenge were displayed by minimally verbal children. More parenting stress could be associated with the presence of more EBPs in the home; alternatively, parenting stress may confound reports. It is essential for assessments of EBPs in autistic children to take a multi-informant approach. Better understanding of the associations between informant characteristics and informant discrepancies of EBPs is needed.

KW - Agreement

KW - Autism

KW - Child emotional and behavioral problems

KW - Discrepancies

KW - Informants

UR - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10803-021-05421-x

U2 - 10.1007/s10803-021-05421-x

DO - 10.1007/s10803-021-05421-x

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JO - Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

JF - Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

ER -

Parent, Teacher and Observational Reports of Emotional and Behavioral Problems in Young Autistic Children

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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