Responses of Mothers and Fathers on the Personality Inventory for Children: Are they Significantly Different?

Abstract

The ability of fathers to identify salient cognitive and personality characteristics of their handicapped children using the Personality Inventory for Children (PIC) was compared to that of mothers. Furthermore, the relationship between each of their PIC responses and independently derived measures of classroom behavior (i.e., WPBIC) and cognitive functioning (i.e., WISC-R) was studied. Even though the results showed high interparent agreement across all 16 PIC profile scales for 30 learning disabled and 15 emotionally disturbed children, mothers consistently rated their children as having greater difficulty. Scale to criterion correlations, nonetheless, indicate that PICs completed by either the mother or father can be interpreted similarly.