Ecob, R., Macintyre, S. & West, P. Reporting by parents of longstanding illness in their adolescent children. Social Science and Medicine. 1993; 36: 1017-22.

It is unusual to be able to obtain a comparative reference for parent's proxy reports on adolescent children's health from the children themselves. Moreover information on the reporting context (either mother alone, father alone or both parents together) is rarely reported and even more rarely analysed. Such information was built into design of this data collection, of 15 year olds from the first wave of the West of Scotland Twenty-07 study. Parents were found to over-report longstanding but not limiting longstanding illness. No differential reporting by reporting context was found but the likelihood of disagreement between parent and child varied according to reporting context. The gender of the young person influences the relationship between proxy and self reports. Fathers reporting alone showed high odds of disagreement, particularly of limiting longstanding illness, mainly due to under-reporting for daughters in comparison to their self reports.