Parent and teacher congruency on variations of an assessment instrument: An examinatio

Research has shown parents' reports of their child's abilities to be highly correlated with professionals' scores and that parents typically score their child higher in relation to the professionals' scores. One possible reason for the discrepancy between parents' and professionals' scores is that the professionals have not yet identified techniques for collecting information from parents in a way which promotes congruence.;The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of variations in assessment instrument format on congruency among reports of child developmental status from both parents and teacher. The assessment instrument used was the Developmental Observation Checklist System - Developmental Checklist (DC), which has no pictures or extensive examples and two response categories. Three modified versions of the DC were created with (a) pictures and examples added and two response categories, (b) no pictures or examples added and three response categories, and (c) pictures and examples added and three response categories.;A 3 x 4 factorial analysis of variance was used to analyze the data. This design had two between-subjects factors: (a) rater with three levels--mother, father, and teacher; and (b) assessment with four levels as described previously. The main effect and one two-way interaction were used to address the questions in the study.;One hundred sets of participants completed the versions of the assessment instrument. A set consisted of a mother, father, and teacher of a child chronologically below the age of 6 years with and without developmental delays. Early intervention and child-care programs in Alabama and Mississippi were chosen as recruitment sites.;Results of data analysis revealed no significant differences among the four different versions of the DC or for the interaction among the four versions of the DC and the three raters. However, mothers and fathers differed significantly from teachers but not from one another on the overall scores on the versions of the DC with mothers and fathers, on the average, giving the child higher scores than the teachers gave.