Integrating multi-informant reports of youth mental health: A construct validation test of Kraemer and colleagues’ (2003) Satellite Model

Accurately assessing youth mental health involves obtaining reports from multiple informants who typically display low levels of correspondence. This low correspondence may reflect situational specificity. That is, youth vary as to where they display mental health concerns and informants vary as to where and from what perspective they observe youth. Despite the frequent need to understand and interpret these informant discrepancies, no consensus guidelines exist for integrating informants’ reports. The path to building these guidelines starts with identifying factors that reliably predict the level and form of these informant discrepancies, and do so for theoretically and empirically relevant reasons. Yet, despite the knowledge of situational specificity, few approaches to integrating multi-informant data are well-equipped to account for these factors in measurement, and those that claim to be well-positioned to do so have undergone little empirical scrutiny. One promising approach was developed roughly 20 years ago by Kraemer and colleagues (2003). Their Satellite Model leverages principal components analysis (PCA) and strategic selection of informants to instantiate situational specificity in measurement, namely components reflecting variance attributable to the context in which informants observe behavior (e.g., home/non-home), the perspective from which they observe behavior (e.g., self/other), and behavior that manifests across contexts and perspectives (i.e., trait). The current study represents the first construct validation test of the Satellite Model. A mixed-clinical/community sample of 134 adolescents and their parents completed six parallel surveys of adolescent mental health. Adolescents also participated in a series of simulated social interactions with research personnel trained to act as same-age, unfamiliar peers. A third informant (unfamiliar untrained observer) viewed these interactions and completed the same surveys as parents and adolescents. We applied the Satellite Model to each set of surveys and observed high internal consistency estimates for each of the six-item trait (α = 0.90), context (α = 0.84), and perspective (α = 0.83) components. Scores reflecting the trait, context, and perspective components displayed distinct patterns of relations to a battery of criterion variables that varied in the context, perspective, and source of measurement. The Satellite Model instantiates situational specificity in measurement and facilitates unifying conceptual and measurement models of youth mental health.