Rachel A. Vaughn-Coaxum

The Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (MFQ) is a widely used screening tool for childhood depression, but existing cutoff scores have been derived primarily from older or clinically referred samples of youth. Less is known about score distributions and percentiles in nationally representative samples of younger children. The present study established parent-report MFQ norms and evaluated item characteristics and Differential Item Functioning (DIF) across parent race/ethnicity, and parent and child sex, in a large, population-based sample. Data were collected in February 2024 from 1,000 U.S. parents of children ages 5–12. Parents completed demographic measures and the 34-item long-form MFQ. Item response theory (IRT) analyses evaluated unidimensionality, item discrimination, and DIF across the three largest racial/ethnic groups (White, Black, Latine) and across parent and child sex. Percentile ranks and 95% confidence intervals were generated for MFQ raw total scores. Results supported unidimensionality and good model fit. All items demonstrated adequate to strong discrimination, and no items showed meaningful DIF across subgroups. Percentile norms indicated that a raw score of 15 corresponded to the 85th percentile, providing a developmentally appropriate cutoff for younger children in community samples. These findings augment the evidence base for the MFQ by providing nationally representative norms for younger children, with practical implications for clinical interpretation of total scale scores.

Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) often occurs with or without Conduct Disorder (CD) symptoms, yet it is unclear whether these presentations differ meaningfully in parenting, parent mental health, or co-occurring child difficulties. Using parent-report data from a cross-sectional, nationally representative sample of 1,000 children aged 5–12 years, this study compared those who screened positive for both ODD and CD, ODD only, or neither condition across measures of child and parent psychopathology and parenting practices and knowledge. Children with both ODD and CD showed broad elevations in anxiety, depression, and attention problems, along with higher rates of parent anxiety and depression. Their parents also reported poorer supervision, less positive parenting, and more inconsistent and harsh discipline. In contrast, children with ODD alone displayed moderate elevations in symptoms but largely normative parenting knowledge and discipline practices, differing little from those without disruptive behaviors. Findings highlight distinct symptom patterns associated with ODD with and without CD and underscore the importance of assessing these disorders separately. Clinicians should evaluate both child and parent mental health when ODD is present and tailor interventions accordingly. Moving beyond a “one-size-fits-all” approach may improve outcomes by aligning treatment strategies with each family’s unique constellation of symptoms and functioning.

Background: The development of efficient, scalable, and precise tools to assess knowledge of evidence-based parenting strategies is critical, particularly as increased parenting knowledge is a core target of many intervention programs. Objective: This study aimed to develop and evaluate a computerized adaptive testing version of the Knowledge of Effective Parenting Test–Internalizing module (KEPT-I CAT). Methods: Using computerized adaptive testing simulations from a large (n=1000) national dataset, we compared the performance of the KEPT-I CAT to both the full-length Knowledge of Effective Parenting Test–Internalizing module and a 10-item static short form (KEPT-I Brief). Results: Results indicated that the KEPT-I CAT achieved comparable efficiency to the KEPT-I Brief (10 items), while demonstrating superior psychometric properties and modestly reducing the potential for practice effects. Conclusions: Given these advantages, the KEPT-I CAT is well-suited for post-intervention assessment and may facilitate research examining how increases in parenting knowledge relate to changes in behavior and reductions in child internalizing symptoms.

The effects of parenting behaviors on children’s internalizing symptoms are influenced by numerous factors. Across prior studies, there is evidence that parental internalizing symptoms (anxiety and depression) are associated with less consistent and structured parenting behaviors as well as higher child internalizing symptoms. Factors such as familial socioeconomic status and cultural identity have also been shown to interact with parental internalizing symptoms and parenting behaviors. Prior studies of these associations often do not include fathers and are not typically population representative. The goal of the present study was to leverage a nationally representative sample of U.S. parents to examine how parents’ self-reported internalizing symptoms relate to their parenting behaviors and reports of their child’s symptoms, accounting for familial factors (socioeconomic status, child age, sex, race, and ethnicity) known to influence parenting. Parents of 5-12-year-old children (N = 1570, 36% fathers) completed self-report measures of their parenting (inconsistent discipline and poor supervision and monitoring), their depression and anxiety symptoms, and their children’s internalizing symptoms. Results from structural equation modeling demonstrated that maternal and paternal internalizing symptoms were associated with less consistent parenting behaviors and with greater child internalizing symptoms. Paternal internalizing symptoms were also indirectly associated with child symptoms via less consistent parenting. Associations among family sociodemographic factors and parenting behaviors varied across parents. Results are consistent with findings from previous studies in smaller samples, focused primarily on mothers. Findings support the generalizability of associations among parental internalizing symptoms, parenting behaviors, and child internalizing symptoms to fathers and to nonclinical samples of parents.

Centering the perspectives of youth with lived experience (YWLE) in psychopathology is critical to engaging in impactful clinical research to improve youth mental health outcomes. Over the past decade there has been a greater push in clinical science to include community members, and especially community members with lived experience, in all aspects of the research process. The goal of this editorial is to highlight the need for and importance of integrating YWLE into every stage of clinical science research, from idea generation to interpretation and dissemination of research findings. We identify five key problems associated with pursuing research on adolescent mental health without involvement of YWLE and propose strategies to overcome barriers to youth engagement in clinical science research. We conclude with a call to action, providing guidance to clinical scientists, institutions, and funding agencies in conducting research on youth psychopathology with YWLE.

More than 50 years of randomized clinical trials for youth psychotherapies have resulted in moderate effect sizes for treatments targeting the most common mental health problems in children and adolescents (i.e., anxiety, depression, conduct problems, and attention disorders). Despite having psychotherapies that are effective for many children, there has been a dearth of progress in identifying the contextual factors that likely influence who will respond to a given psychotherapy, and under what conditions. The developmental psychopathology evidence base consistently demonstrates that psychosocial risk exposures (e.g., childhood adversities, interpersonal stressors, family dysfunction) significantly influence the onset and course of youth psychopathology. However, the developmental psychopathology framework remains to be well integrated into treatment development and psychotherapy research. We argue that advances in basic developmental psychopathology research carry promising implications for the design and content of youth psychotherapies. Research probing the effects of psychosocial risks on youth development can enrich efforts to identify contextual factors in psychotherapy effectiveness and to personalize treatment. In this article we review empirically supported and hypothesized influences of individual- and family-level risk factors on youth psychotherapy outcomes, and we propose a framework for leveraging developmental psychopathology to strengthen psychotherapies.

The Knowledge of Effective Parenting Test (KEPT) is a measure of parent management skills that was developed as an outcome measure for clinical trials of psychosocial treatments for disruptive behavior disorders. In the current study, we developed a computer adaptive test (CAT; KEPT-CAT) prototype and compared it to the full item bank (21 items; KEPT-Full) and to a brief static version (10 items; KEPT-Brief) using simulations from a large (N = 1,570) nationally representative dataset. Results showed that the KEPT-CAT prototype (median = 8 items) was slightly more efficient than the KEPT-Brief and had a significantly higher (p < .001) correlation with scores from the full item bank (r = .97) than the KEPT-Brief (r = .94). The KEPT-CAT prototype has additional advantages over the static KEPT-Brief, including the potential selection of different items from one administration to the next. This flexibility can reduce practice effects that might result from repeated administration of the same fixed items. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).