Over 60 years of research reveal that informants who observe youth in clinically relevant contexts (e.g., home, school)—typically parents, teachers, and youth clients themselves—often hold discrepant views about that client's needs for mental health services (i.e., informant discrepancies). The last 10 years of research reveal that these discrepancies reflect the reality that (a) youth clients' needs may vary within and across contexts and (b) informants may vary in their expertise for observing youth clients within specific contexts. Accordingly, collecting and interpreting multi-informant data comprise “best practices” in research and clinical care. Yet, professionals across settings (e.g., health, mental health, school) vary in their use of multi-informant data. Specifically, professionals differ in how or to what degree they leverage multi-informant data to determine the goals of services designed to meet youth clients' needs. Further, even when professionals have access to multiple informants' reports, their clinical decisions often signal reliance on one informant's report, thereby omitting reports from other informants. Together, these issues highlight an understudied research-to-practice gap that limits the quality of services for youth. We advance a framework—the Needs-to-Goals Gap—to characterize the role of informant discrepancies in identifying youth clients' needs and the goals of services to meet those needs. This framework connects the utility of multi-informant data with the reality that services often target an array of needs within and across contexts, and that making decisions without accurately integrating multiple informants' reports may result in suboptimal care. We review evidence supporting the framework and outline directions for future research.

60 多年的研究表明，在临床相关环境（例如，家庭、学校）中观察青少年的线人——通常是父母、老师和青少年客户自己——通常对客户对心理健康服务的需求持有不同的看法（即，线人的差异）。过去 10 年的研究表明，这些差异反映了以下现实：(a) 青年客户的需求可能在不同背景下和不同背景下有所不同，以及 (b) 举报人的专业知识可能有所不同用于观察特定背景下的青年客户。因此，收集和解释多信息数据包括研究和临床护理中的“最佳实践”。然而，不同环境（例如，健康、心理健康、学校）的专业人员在使用多信息数据方面存在差异。具体而言，专业人士在如何或在何种程度上利用多信息数据来确定旨在满足青年客户需求的服务目标方面存在差异。此外，即使专业人员可以访问多个线人的报告，他们的临床决策通常也表明依赖于一个线人的报告，从而忽略了其他线人的报告。总之，这些问题突出了限制青年服务质量的研究与实践之间的差距。我们推进了一个框架——需求与目标的差距——描述信息差异在确定青年客户的需求和满足这些需求的服务目标方面的作用。该框架将多线人数据的效用与以下现实联系起来：服务通常针对环境内和跨环境的一系列需求，并且在未准确整合多个线人报告的情况下做出决策可能会导致护理效果不佳。我们回顾了支持该框架的证据，并概述了未来研究的方向。