Parents’ personality features affect ratings of their child’s social-communicative behaviors

Informant report is a ubiquitous research method in psychology and the behavioral sciences, and parent report in particular is especially so in developmental psychology. The vast majority of developmental psychology studies collect information from one parent about their child. The purpose of this study was to determine what, if any, parental features affect ratings of their child’s social and communicative behaviors. In a study of n=600 parents of toddlers between 22 and 36 months of age, we found substantial agreement for the total number of words produced, but lower agreement for a measure of reciprocal social behavior. Of the demographic and personality features studied, only the parent’s personality features affected both ratings, otherwise, mother and fathers and primary and secondary caregivers gave statistically equivalent ratings.