Parents Rating Children's Social Behavior: How Focused the Lens?

Explored the concordance between social competence ratings obtained using the Social Competence section of Achenbach and Edelbrock's (1983) Child Behavior Checklist and more traditional instruments. We assessed convergent validity by comparing parent ratings on the Activities and Social Scales (a) with self-ratings by children using the same items reworded in the first person, (b) with peer nominations, and (c) with social self-perception ratings. A total of 185 children randomly sampled from regular Grades 5, 8, and 10 classes participated. There was poor concordance between parent ratings and self-ratings. Inconclusive findings were obtained with respect to the intercorrelations of the parent ratings, peer nominations, and ratings of social self-perception.