Abstract

This work tackles the measurement invariance of the social cognition construct when different observers, age and participant’s age are considered. This is a prior question that needs to be answered before attributing discrepancies in information coming from diverse sources just to the varying behavior occurring across setting, and mainly interpret the discrepancies as indicative of cross-contextual variability. The article also studies the link between discrepancies and source-specific information and the validity of that information to predict several outcomes. The measurement invariance across sex, time and informant of a social cognition measure applied to children’s parents and teachers was longitudinally tested in a Spanish general population sample, at ages 5 (N = 581) and 10 (N = 438). Full or partial metric and scalar equivalence were found across sex and over time within informants. Partial scalar invariance was not obtained across informants. Latent class analysis identified 2 classes of difficulties in social cognition for both informants at both ages: low social cognition and high social cognition. Comparison of classes resulting predicting outcomes yielded differential predictions due not only to varying context but also to a different concept of social cognition across informants. In general, significant differences between raters were informant dependent. We conclude that it is important to consider both teachers’ and parents’ observations to fully understand the construct of social cognition.

摘要

当考虑不同的观察者、年龄和参与者的年龄时，这项工作解决了社会认知结构的测量不变性。这是一个先验问题，在将来自不同来源的信息差异归因于跨环境发生的不同行为之前，需要先回答这个问题，并且主要将差异解释为跨上下文可变性的指示。该文章还研究了差异与特定来源信息之间的联系，以及该信息预测多种结果的有效性。适用于儿童父母和教师的社会认知测量跨性别、时间和线人的测量不变性在西班牙一般人口样本中进行了纵向测试，年龄为 5 ( N  = 581) 和 10 ( N = 438）。在不同性别和不同时间的线人中发现完全或部分度量和标量等价。部分标量不变性没有在线人之间获得。潜在类别分析确定了两个年龄段的两个受访者在社会认知方面的两类困难：低社会认知和高社会认知。比较导致预测结果的类别产生了不同的预测，这不仅是由于不同的背景，而且是由于线人之间不同的社会认知概念。一般而言，评分者之间的显着差异取决于线人。我们得出结论，重要的是要同时考虑教师和家长的观察，以充分理解社会认知的结构。