601 - Parent and Adolescent Perspectives on Adolescent Socioemotional Health

Poster Number: 601
Publication Number: 601.2083

Background: Socioemotional health plays an important role in adolescent development and predicts critical outcomes like academic performance and mental health. When adolescents experience poor socioemotional health, parents may be able to help seek support for their child. But parents may have perceptions of their child’s socioemotional health that differ from their child’s perceptions.

Objective: We aimed to a) to assess concordance vs discordance between parent and adolescent reports of adolescent socioemotional health, and b) to examine connections between socioemotional health and the child’s global health.

Design/Methods: Data were collected from November 2021-February 2022. Parents completed a survey via web or phone through the Voices of Child Health in Chicago Parent Panel Survey. Parents were eligible if they had a child 12-17 years old. Parents then provided contact information for their child. Adolescents completed a web-based survey via Qualtrics. This study focuses on paired parent and adolescent responses about the adolescent’s well-being, psychological stress, and family relationship. Degree of parent-child discordance was defined as the absolute value of the adolescent response minus parent response; higher values indicate greater discordance. Respondents self-reported race, ethnicity and other demographics. Data were analyzed using Pearson correlations.

Results: Responses were obtained from 111 parent-child matched pairs (Table 1). The overall survey completion rate was 34.4% for parents and 64.5% for adolescents. Parents and their adolescent children had moderate concordance in their ratings of adolescent well-being (r=.44, p<.05), followed by psychological stress (r=.38, p<.001), and family relationship (r=.31, p<.001) (Figure 1). The strength of these correlations did not differ significantly from one another. The degree of parent-child discordance on each of the three socioemotional health variables was not associated with the child’s self-reported global health. However, the socioemotional health measures themselves were associated with child global health: well-being (r=.67, p<.001) and family relationship (r=.67, p<.001) had positive associations, whereas psychological stress had a negative association (r=-.40, p<.001).

Conclusion(s): Parents and their adolescent children had moderately correlated reports regarding adolescents’ socioemotional health. Adolescent socioemotional health was associated with their global health. Future research may illuminate the feasibility and acceptability of screening adolescents for socioemotional health.