Abstract
It is not uncommon for caregivers and adolescents to provide different perspectives of adolescents’ mental health symptoms; however, few studies have examined these discrepancies, especially between foster parents and adolescents in the child welfare system. The goal of this study was to investigate the levels of disagreement on adolescent mental health symptoms among caregivers and adolescents in foster care, to examine factors associated with caregiver–adolescent discrepancies, and the potential moderating role of caregiver–child closeness on the link between the length of time the youth lived with caregivers and discrepancies regarding adolescent mental health symptoms. These research questions were examined using two measures of adolescent–caregiver disagreement, intraclass correlations and discrepancy scores, using data from a nationally representative study of youth involved with the child welfare system. Analyses of 183 adolescent–caregiver dyads revealed caregiver–adolescent disagreement on adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing symptoms, with caregivers reporting higher levels of adolescents’ problems on average. Adolescent gender, type of maltreatment experienced, and placement type were associated with caregiver–adolescent discrepancies. Results also indicated that closeness with caregivers significantly moderated the relationship between the length of time adolescents lived with their caregivers and discrepancies on adolescent externalizing symptoms.