Aceptación-rechazo parental y ajuste psicológico infanto-juvenilanálisis del efecto informante y la validez incremental en un procedimiento de evaluación multi-informante

Resumen

This doctoral thesis analyses, from a multi-informant perspective, the parental acceptance-rejection and its consequences on children and adolescents’ mental health, within the Interpersonal Acceptance-Rejection Theory frame. This evidence based theoretical frame holds that rejection experiences from parental figures during childhood become a risk factor for sons and daughters’ mental health, while acceptance brings on psychological adjustment. The main aim of this thesis is to optimize, with a multi-informant approach (using fathers, mothers, and children from the same family as informants), the prediction of children’s psychological adjustment based on parental acceptance-rejection. For that purpose, four studies are presented whereby, with a round robin design, all informants (fathers, mothers, and children) report all studied variables. The predictors are maternal and paternal acceptance-rejection. The criterion variables are children’s exteriorized and interiorized problems. The participants were triads from the same family who answered the Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire in its different parallel versions, and the CBCL or YSR from Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment. Preliminary data analyses were conducted through bivariate correlations, partial correlations, Fisher’s z, Raghunathan’s z, and/or Student’s t. Furthermore, according to the specific objectives in each research study, in order to identify the informant effect, the Correlated Uniqueness Model (Multitrait-multimethod matrices) was used; in order to explore the informant’s incremental validity, several hierarchical regressions were conducted; in order to stablish the possible moderating effect of age and sex on the informant effect, invariance analyses through structural equation models were used; in order to analyze the moderating effect of children’s perception of familial affection, moderated regression analyses were conducted; and to explore congruence and incongruence effect, Response Surface Analysis was used (RSA). The results confirm the association between parental acceptance-rejection and children’s psychological adjustment, although the relation among these two variables is not significant in every studied condition. On one hand, a significant informant effect is observed, independently of children’s age and sex. On the other hand, our results show a limited support for multi-informant assessment when predicting children’s psychological adjustment from parental acceptance-rejection, at least in terms of the incremental validity of test (IVT). Accordingly, the results support a multiaxial approach in children over 13 years old and only in some conditions. Also, children’s perception of being in a low affection familial environment emerges as a risk factor for externalized problems when self-perceived and mother-perceived maternal rejection are congruent at high rejection. However, mothers-children incongruence on perceived maternal rejection constitutes a protective factor for externalized problems, thus the higher the incongruence, the lower levels of maladjustment are expected. Finally, the results show the need for considering the paternal figure as an informant of his own paternal acceptance-rejection behavior and his offspring’s psychological adjustment. As a general conclusion, research designs or inferences extracted from any assessment process which considers parental acceptance-rejection related to children’s psychological adjustment should take into account that informants, when they are fathers, mothers and children, do have an impact on the results. Nevertheless, these results also show that the reports from fathers, mothers, and children themselves can be relevant separately or combined, depending on the assessment’s goal. Consequently, the present doctoral thesis highlights the need for more research to improve decision making when selecting informant sources in children and adolescent’s assessment.