Levels of agreement between parents' and children's reports of near work

PURPOSE: To assess whether parents and children report the same information regarding children's near vision activities when given similar questionnaires. METHODS: Data from questionnaires administered to 406 children and their parents were analyzed to evaluate the agreement between parent and child reports. The questionnaires were completed during the 1994 testing of the Orinda Longitudinal Study of Myopia. Each child and parent was asked to categorize how often the child reads for pleasure. In addition, each subject was asked to estimate how many hours per week were spent in each of five visual activities. The weighted kappa statistic, paired t-tests, and polytomous logistic regression were used for analyses. RESULTS: A weighted kappa = 0.42 (moderate agreement) was found in the comparison of child-reported vs. parent-reported classification of reading. Agreement between parent- and child-reported number of hours spent doing homework (0.21), reading for pleasure (0.31), watching television (0.31), playing video games (0.31), and engaging in sports/outdoor activities (0.26) was fair for each activity. CONCLUSIONS: Although the results indicate fair to moderate levels of agreement, better methods of reporting near-work activities are needed for future myopia research.