Distorted self-perceptions: Divergent self-reports as statistical outliers in the multimethod assessment of children's social-emotional adjustment

The influence of statistical outliers among older children's self-reports was investigated in the context of a multitrait-multimethod validation of the Weinberger Adjustment Inventory (Weinberger, 1991). Self, teacher, and peer ratings in 6th-grade classrooms (N = 155) provided evidence of the convergent and discriminant validity of distress (i.e., anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and low well-being) and self-restraint (i.e., impulse control, suppression of aggression, consideration of others, and responsibility) as superordinate dimensions of adjustment. However, a few children were statistical outliers whose self-reports starkly contradicted others' perceptions. These nonrepresentative cases notably affected the validity coefficients for the entire sample and seemed to identify children with potentially clinically significant distortions in their self-perceptions.