Are clinicians' assessments of improvements in children's functioning "global"?

In this study, the authors examined the relations among clinician ratings of treatment improvement and discrepancies between parent and blinded laboratory rater reports of child social functioning administered before and after treatment for social anxiety disorder. Participants included a clinic sample of 101 children (7-16 years old; M = 11.67, SD = 2.57; 51 girls, 81% Caucasian) receiving treatment as part of a two-site controlled trial. Overall, clinician ratings reflected lack of improvement when parents reported persistent (i.e., pre- to posttreament) social functioning deficits not reported by blinded raters. However, when blinded raters reported persistent social skill deficits not reported by parents, we did not observe the same effect on clinician ratings as we did when the direction of discrepant reports was reversed. We replicated these observations in a subset of participants (n = 81) providing parent and child pre-post reports of social anxiety symptoms. These findings have implications for the interpretations of clinical ratings as "primary outcome measures" within controlled trials.