Pediatric vs. Parent-Report

• Pediatric self-report is the standard for measuring outcomes among children.
• Parents can report on their children when the child is too young, cognitively impaired, or too ill to complete a measure.
• Self-report and parent proxy report scores are not equivalent. Self-report captures the child’s perspective of their health, whereas parent proxy report captures that specific parent’s perspective of their child’s health. Therefore, parent proxy report scores are not equivalent when completed by different parents/proxies.
• It is optimal to assess both the child and parent as their perspectives may independently relate to healthcare utilization, risk factors, and quality of care.

View our recommendations on when to use self- and proxy report at Recommended Measures by Age Group.

• PROMIS® Pediatric measures are for children ages 8-17.
• Neuro-QoL™ Pediatric measures are for children ages 8-17.
• NIH Toolbox® Pediatric measures are for children ages 8-17.

Some measurement systems include the same domain (e.g., depression). The measure content and scoring are usually different. Scores from different measurement systems cannot be compared.

View our recommendations on when to use self-report at Recommended Measures by Age Group.

• PROMIS Early Childhood Parent-Report measures are for children ages 1-5.
• PROMIS Parent Proxy measures are for children ages 5-17.
• There are NIH Toolbox Parent Report Emotion measures specifically for children ages 3-7 and for children ages 8-12.

Some measurement systems include the same domain (e.g., depression). The measure content and scoring are usually different. Scores from different measurement systems cannot be compared.

The PROMIS Early Childhood measures used the PROMIS Parent Proxy item banks as a starting point for measure development, but include unique items and are scored on a separate metric.

View our recommendations on when to use parent-report at Recommended Measures by Age Group.