Reading focus
Syllabus: How Should Psychological Treatment Change Across Childhood and Adolescence?
Look for observations that could distinguish context differences from measurement problems.
Why you’re reading it. Make disagreement informative before trying to resolve it.
A question to consider. A parent reports fewer outbursts while a teacher sees no change. What information would help decide whether treatment gains are limited to one setting?
Why this reading
A young person, parent and teacher may give different accounts without any one report being a complete description. De Los Reyes explains how disagreement can become evidence about context and perspective rather than a nuisance to average away.
Before you read
An informant is someone reporting on behavior or experience. Measurement error can produce disagreement, but so can observing a person in different situations. Agreement alone does not establish that a report is accurate.
Read for
- Follow the distinction between reliability of a discrepancy and evidence about what it means.
- Examine the examples connecting reports to independent observations and treatment outcomes.
Consider afterwards
- How would you investigate a teacher’s report of improvement when the young person reports increasing distress?
- When might combining reports conceal information relevant to treatment?
Editorial context
This is a conceptual introduction and selective review, not a rule that every disagreement is meaningful or that one informant should always prevail. The proposed interpretations require evidence about settings, observations and measurement. The accompanying special-section papers are separate works.