Adult- and Self-reported Assessment of Children’s and Adolescents’ Anxiety: Implications for Understanding Informant Discrepancies in a Large Household Survey

Agreement between adult and youth self-reports of anxiety has important implications for mental health treatment and population monitoring.However, most research on informant discrepancies has been conducted in high-resourced settings or among clinic or school-based samples.To fill this gap, we used data from the June 2023 wave of SEHAT (N = 19,472; youth ages 8-19), a population-based household survey conducted in India.We examined agreement between adult and youth self-reported anxiety symptoms, factors associated with agreement, and how youth survey participation may shape these findings.Anxiety was assessed using the generalized anxiety subscale of the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale.Overall, agreement between adult and self-reports of anxiety symptoms was high (ICC = 0.75) but varied by adult-reporter and household characteristics.Polynomial regression analyses indicated that agreement was higher among families living in rural areas and in smaller households, with more complex patterns by adult-reporter's own mental health.Youth survey participation also varied systematically, with youth with high adult reported anxiety symptoms less likely to provide self-reports.These results highlight how agreement varies by reporting context, as well as the importance of considering adult reporter characteristics, household context, and potential biases from youth survey participation in youth anxiety reporting.