Young Carers' Identification: Comparing Adolescents' and Parents' Perspectives.
Jade Pilato, Géraldine Dorard, Clizia Cincidda and 1 others
PMID 39567360WHAT IT FOUND
Parents reported more household illness or disability than adolescents did, but adolescents reported more caring activities than parents did.
Agreement on who was ill or disabled was low, so neither report alone captures young carers.
Key findings
01Parents reported an ill or disabled household member in 33.76% of dyads, while adolescents reported one in 20.49%, and agreement was low.
02Among households with an ill or disabled relative, adolescents reported higher total caring activities than their parents did.
03Of the 312 dyads that identified an ill or disabled relative, 86 agreed on both the relative and the illness or disability.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The adolescents completed the questionnaire in class with peers present, and the authors say this may have made them reluctant to report family illness or disability. Most participating parents were mothers, and fathers were underrepresented, so the parent side of many dyads reflects mainly mothers' views. The analyses used only 776 dyads after excluding adolescents or parents who did not participate or had incomplete questionnaires. The parent respondent could be the ill or disabled relative or the healthy parent, which may have affected disclosure. The classification of illness as severe or chronic was manual and the authors question whether the labels are reliable. The authors describe the study as exploratory and call for confirmatory work.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that adolescents are poor reporters of family illness. The study used self-report questionnaires completed in class, and the parent sample was mostly mothers, so it cannot show why reports differed or whether one informant is more accurate.