Agreement between parent‐adolescent ratings on psychosocial outcome and quality‐of‐life following childhood traumatic brain injury

OBJECTIVE: This study investigated parent-adolescent agreement in long-term psychosocial and quality-of-life (QoL) outcomes. The sample comprised adolescents aged 15-18 years, who sustained childhood traumatic brain injury (TBI) between birth and 5 years of age. METHODS: Thirty-three participants (17 adolescents with TBI and 16 TBI parent-proxies) were involved in the study which compared parent and adolescent ratings on the Sydney Psychosocial Reintegration Scale-Child form (SPRS-C) and the Pediatric Quality-of-Life Inventory (PedsQL). The questionnaires were administered through phone interviews. RESULTS: As hypothesized, parent-adolescent agreement was acceptable for psychosocial outcome (intra-class coefficient ICC of 0.844, p < 0.001), whereas discrepancies were found for ratings of QoL (ICC of 0.506, p = 0.092). CONCLUSION: The finding that parents and adolescents agree on psychosocial outcome is promising for those instances when the patient is unable to report; however, discrepancies regarding QoL suggest caution needs to be taken when interpreting parent-rated QoL data.