Infant Behavior & Development 27 (2004) 323–341 Your own children are special: clues to the sources of reporting bias in temperament assessments Ronald Seifer a,∗ , Arnold Sameroff b , Susan Dickstein a , Masha Schiller a , Lisa C. Hayden a a Brown Medical School, E.P. Bradley Hospital, Brown University, 1011 Veterans Memorial Parkway, East Providence, RI 02806, USA b Center for Human Growth and Development, University of Michigan, USA Received 25 July 2003; received in revised form 22 December 2003; accepted 24 December 2003 Abstract We investigated sources of discrepancy between parents’ and observers’ reports of infant temperament behavior. A laboratory protocol was employed that involved rating of 4 segments of the mothers’ own children’s behavior on 4 temperament characteristics (yielding a profile of 16 ratings) and rating 6 segments of behavior of standard children on the 4 temperament characteristics (yielding a profile of 24 ratings). These ratings were completed by mothers and by trained observers. Correspondence between mothers and observers for standard children was high, approaching the criteria typically employed to certify researchers on a coding protocol. In contrast, correspondence between mothers and observers for own children was negligible. The relationship status of the observer and target is important when considering correspondence among observers. © 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Temperament; Observation ratings; Parent–observer concordance; Relationship variance 1. Introduction Parents don’t always provide the precise information we would like to have about their children. If parents were complete and accurate reporters, research in human development would be far more eco- nomical, and our current knowledge base would likely be much more comprehensive. Developmentalists ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 401 793 8730; fax: +1 401 793 8799. E-mail address: ronald seifer@brown.edu (R. Seifer). 0163-6383/$ – see front matter © 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2003.12.005