Peer-reviewed article
Single item measure of parental history of agoraphobia: Agreement between adult children's and parents' own reports.
Clodagh Flinn, Rachel J Burns ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examines the accuracy of adult children's reports about whether their parents have a history of agoraphobia, compared with parents' own self-reports. Using data from 1,193 adult children and their parents in the Netherlands, researchers found weak to moderate agreement between the two groups. Adult children were generally accurate in reporting their mothers' agoraphobia history but tended to underestimate their fathers' history.
Key points
- Agreement between adult children's and parents' own reports of parental agoraphobia was weak to moderate (κ=0.40-0.47)
- Sensitivity for identifying maternal agoraphobia was high (95.2%) but lower for paternal agoraphobia (66.7%)
- Specificity was high for both mothers (91.8%) and fathers (97.8%)
- Adult children appear to underestimate fathers' agoraphobia history while accurately identifying mothers' history
- This is the first study to directly compare adult children's reports of parental agoraphobia with parents' self-reports
Limitations
This study focuses on measurement agreement in psychiatric history reporting and does not address child well-being, development, protection, or participation outcomes. The findings relate only to the validity of a data collection method, not to any intervention or impact on children's lives.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Agoraphobia has traditionally been grouped with panic disorder in clinical and research settings. However, it has recently been acknowledged as a distinct condition which can and does occur in the absence panic disorder. The genetic heritability of agoraphobia is high. It can be impractical or impossible to contact parents directly to assess their psychiatric history, often leading to the use of single item measures of parental psychiatric history (e.g., has your mother/father ever had agoraphobia?). This study examined the agreement between responses of adult children (n = 1193) on a single item measure of parental agoraphobia history and their parents' own responses on a single item measure of their own agoraphobia history. DESIGN: Data came from the Lifelines Cohort Study, which is a community-based study in the Netherlands. Parents self-reported if they had a history of agoraphobia. Kappa, sensitivity, selectivity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value were calculated. RESULTS: There was weak to moderate agreement between adult children's reports of parental agoraphobia history and parents' own reports of agoraphobia history (κmothers = 0.47, κfathers = 0.40). Sensitivity ranged from 66.7% for fathers to 95.2% for mothers. Specificity was high for both mothers (91.8%) and fathers (97.8%). CONCLUSION: Findings suggest that adult children may somewhat underestimate their fathers' history of agoraphobia, while successfully identifying with high accuracy their mothers' history of agoraphobia. This is the first study to examine the agreement between adult children's reports of parental agoraphobia history and their parents' own self-reports of agoraphobia history.