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The most accurate understanding of children’s behavior comes from multimethod assessment. Multimethod assessment involves gathering data in a number of different ways to obtain the most complete picture possible (Butcher, 2019). Ideally, multimethod assessment involves four components:

1 Interviewing children and caregivers;

2 Observing children’s behavior;

3 Collecting behavioral ratings from children, parents, and teachers; and

4 Administering norm-referenced tests to assess specific areas of functioning.

Multimethod assessment would be extremely helpful in identifying the cause of Sara’s physical complaints and school refusal. First, we would probably want to interview Sara and her mother to learn more about her family and developmental history. How long has Sara had this problem? How are her grades? Does she have friends at school?

Second, we might want to observe Sara’s school refusal firsthand. Perhaps we could find a way to intervene and make mornings go more smoothly for her family.

Third, we might administer behavioral rating scales to Sara’s parents and teachers, to assess Sara’s functioning at home and school, respectively. Maybe she is having problems in other areas.

Finally, we might administer some psychological tests to assess Sara’s cognitive abilities, academic skills, or social–emotional functioning. Does she have a learning disability that is causing academic problems and embarrassment at school? Does Sara avoid school because she is depressed or anxious?

Multi-informant assessment is equally necessary to provide a complete picture of a child’s functioning. Data should be gathered from different people. Previous research has shown low correlations between parents, teachers, and children’s ratings of child behavior. The overall correlation across informants is only .28. Consequently, a clinician who relies only on information provided by one informant will likely obtain an inaccurate picture of a child’s functioning (de Los Reyes et al., 2015).

Why do informants disagree so much in their reports? There are at least two reasons. First, informants are privy to different types of information about children’s functioning. For example, parents and teachers are able to observe children’s overt actions but may not be able to accurately assess children’s thoughts and feelings.

Second, children’s behavior can vary dramatically across settings. For example, children may seem anxious at school but appear relaxed at home. Similarly, children may be defiant and disrespectful toward parents but be courteous and compliant toward teachers. In fact, informant agreement is higher between two parents observing a child in the same setting (r = .58) than between a parent and a teacher observing a child in two different settings (r = .28). Disagreement between informants, therefore, often reflects differences in informants’ knowledge of the child and variability in the child’s behavior across settings. As a result, clinicians must gather and integrate information from multiple people (Villabø, Gere, Torgersen, March, & Kendall, 2012).

Multi-informant assessment would be useful to test our initial hypotheses regarding the source of Sara’s problems. For example, Sara’s parents might report that she has chronic headaches, stomachaches, and nausea at home, whereas her teacher might report no such problems at school. In fact, her teacher might say that Sara has well-developed social skills and several friends at school. Such data might suggest that bullying is not the cause of Sara’s school refusal. We need to revise our hypotheses and look elsewhere.

Review

 Psychological assessment has several purposes: (1) to screen for problems, (2) to reach a diagnosis, (3) to plan treatment, and (4) to monitor progress.

 Multimethod assessment involves collecting data by interviewing children and families, observing children’s behavior, collecting behavioral ratings, and administering norm-referenced tests.

 Multi-informant assessment involves collecting data from caregivers, teachers, and (if applicable) children themselves.