PARENT-PROFESSIONAL CONGRUENCE - IS IT NECESSARY

Considerable attention has been given to the issue of parent-professio nal congruence, specifically in connection with reliability of assessm ents. Concerns regarding the trustworthiness of parental assessments h ave guided research to focus on the conventional issues of interrater reliability and rater interchangeability. However, this conventional p erspective may be misdirected and counterproductive. It is argued that the focus should be the reliability of the pooled assessment informat ion from parents and professionals. A more appropriate generalizabilit y theoretic model, which would maximize social, ecological, and constr uct validity, is proposed. An illustration with data from an early chi ldhood assessment system is provided.