Longitudinal changes in preschoolers' self-reported psychological and social problems: Feasibility, reliability, and cross-informant agreement

Abstract

For decades, parental reports were used to assess children's psychological symptoms and social problems. The Berkeley Puppet Interview (BPI) utilizes hand puppets to collect questionnaire-style interview data from children, allowing consideration of children's own perspective. The current longitudinal study compared the feasibility and reliability of preschoolers' self-report with BPI at age 4 (M = 4.03, SD = 0.16; 52% boy, 82% White American) and 5 (M = 5.22, SD = 0.36) as well as cross-informant agreement among children, mothers, alternate caregivers (> 90% biological fathers), and coders. Children completed Symptom, Prosocial, and Parenting scales of BPI and their parents completed surveys assessing similar constructs. Our findings revealed both similarities and changes across ages. Specifically, the reliability and cross-informant agreement of the broad Symptom and Parenting scales were promising at both timepoints; however, 4-year-olds showed lower internal consistency in Social scales. Recommendations for how to refine and utilize BPI appropriately in young children in future research and the importance of cross-informant design were discussed.

Publication note

Advance online publication, 10 June 2025; no volume, issue or page numbers assigned yet. An earlier preprint of this work circulated via Research Square (2024, PMC11398569); cite the peer-reviewed version above.

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Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

Citation

Meingold Hiu-Ming Chan, Xin Feng, Yihui Gong, Karis Inboden (2025). Longitudinal changes in preschoolers' self-reported psychological and social problems: Feasibility, reliability, and cross-informant agreement.Child Psychiatry & Human Development https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-025-01864-w