Question

describe cross-informant procedures

Answer 1

Note: This response is in UK English, please paste the response to MS Word and you should be able to spot discrepancies easily.

(Answer) Sometimes, researchers adopt thorough methodology in order to get the most accurate result. To do so, they may need to ask focus groups to take a test multiple times. When this is done, they examine all the results together, to make sure that they are not too different. If there are gaping differences, their methodology could probably be flawed. Such a procedure is called a cross-informant procedure.

A typical example of a cross-informant procedure is when one goes to an eye doctor. Getting a new pair of glasses, usually means testing different lenses while reading letters on a whiteboard. When the ophthalmologist tests the patient, many lenses are tried on. Sometimes, the lenses may even be repeated and switched and repeated. This is basically thoroughly analysing the cross-informant procedure, to make sure that the correct option is picked.

Cross-informant to analyse child behaviour are of three types based on the informant:

Child Behaviour Checklist – CBCL: Basic checklist method.

Teacher’s Report Form – TRF: Third-party evaluation by a teacher.

Youth Self-Report – YSR: Personal report on self-evaluation by the child.

Conners Comprehensive Behaviour Rating Scale – CBRS: A scale to check cross-informant agreement between parents and children.

These research methods can be applied to participants in various studies and not only for child psychology.