Parent-Teacher Agreement On Cognitive Disengagement Syndrome Symptoms In School-Age Children

Aim: This study examined how well parent and teacher reports are concordant in evaluating Cognitive Disengagement Syndrome (CDS) symptoms in school-age children. Method: The epidemiological sample consisted of 268 randomly chosen children aged 7 to 11 from four metropolitan cities in Turkey. Both parents and teachers evaluated the children by completing the Barkley Sluggish Cognitive Tempo Scale- Children and Adolescents (BSCTS-CA) and the CDS-Child Behavior Checklist (CDS-CBCL). Agreement and correlations between parent and teacher reports regarding CDS were assessed via coefficients of Cohen’s Kappa (k) and Spearman’s Rho (r). Results: Parents were not in agreement with teachers concerning the presence/absence of CDS (k=0,143, p=0,042 according to BSCTS-CA evaluation; k=0,039, p=0,366 according to CDS-CBCL evaluation). However, parent and teacher ratings on CDS-daydreaming and CDS-sluggish scores of BSCTS-CA showed medium correlation (r=0,375, r=0,305; respectively; all p<0,001); whereas showed low correlation on CDS-CBCL total scores (r=0,290, p<0,001). Parent and teacher ratings showed low correlations on 9 out of 12 BSCTS-CA items (all r<0,26, all p<0,05) and on 3 out of 4 CDS-CBCL items (all r<0,16, all p<0,05). Conclusion: The findings demonstrate that parents and teachers are in low agreement and concordance in evaluating CDS in school-age children. Despite medium-level correlations on both CDS symptom dimensions, the concordance between parents and teachers on almost all CDS symptoms remains at low levels. Although the outcomes may vary across different cultures, clinicians should pay regard to low inter-rater agreement on CDS symptoms in school-age children while evaluating them for CDS.