Law, Duncan J; (1997) Maternal representations and perceptions of child behaviour problems: A pilot study. Doctoral thesis (D.Clin.Psy), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

There is known to be a great deal of variance between maternal ratings of child behaviour problems when compared to those of some other 'independent' rater. Much of this variance may be explained by the different contexts in which the child has been rated. However, there is a great deal of residual variance which appears to be informant-specific. This research sets out to explore the characteristics of maternal informants of child behaviour problems which may account for some of this variance. Previous research in this area has focused on depression and has found the level of maternal depression to be a reasonable predictor of discrepancies in child behaviour ratings. However, this finding offers only a limited account of informant-specific variance on the mother's part. The central hypothesis of this research is that a consideration of a mother's internal representations and level of depression will offer a much fuller model to explain discrepancy in ratings of child behaviour problems. A new model which incorporates both levels of maternal depression and internal representations is proposed and tested using a naturalistic correlational design. Two measures for inferring representations are used: a repertory grid procedure, and verbal free-response description method. The findings suggest that maternal representations of self, as inferred from the free-response method, might be particularly useful in accounting for discrepancy in ratings of child behaviour problems. It is recommended that future research might usefully pursue further testing of the model proposed in this project.

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