Researchers in Canada asked 35 children with ADHD and one parent of each child to rate the children's strengths. The children were 9 to 12 years old, most were boys, and most were taking medication (74.29%). The families were mostly White with higher income and education.
Parents and children agreed on three areas. They rated getting along with others, personal qualities, and handling feelings about the same, and all three landed in the average range.
They differed on two areas. Children rated family involvement in the average range, while parents rated it below average, and this gap was a moderate one. The same pattern showed up for school functioning, where children again scored higher than parents. The overall strength score did not differ enough to be sure the gap was real, though children still landed in the average range and parents in the below average range.
The study was small. A power check suggested that about 105 people would have been needed to detect effects reliably, so these findings come from a limited sample and one rating tool.
The numbers Stats and what the terms mean
The statistics behind the plain-language claims above.
- Miller, 2024: children versus parents on family involvement, Cohen's d = 0.57, p = .019; on school functioning, Cohen's d = 0.59, p = .017; on the overall strength score, p = .097.
What the terms mean:
- p is the chance of seeing a gap at least this big if there were no real difference. Below .05 is usually read as unlikely to be chance alone.
- d is an effect size. Roughly, 0.2 is small, 0.5 is moderate and 0.8 is large. A minus sign shows the direction of the change, not its size.
Source: Courtney Miller, Kristina Jelinkova, Emma Charabin, et al.. Parent and Child-Reported Strengths of Children With ADHD. Canadian Journal of School Psychology (2024). doi:10.1177/08295735231225261