The Prospective Predictive Power of Parent-Reported Personality Traits and Facets in First-Onset Depression in Adolescent Girls

TL;DR

Parent-reported personality traits can help predict first-onset depression in adolescent girls, adding value beyond self-reports.

Contribution

Parent-reported personality measures provide incremental predictive power for depression onsets in adolescent girls.

Findings

Parent-reported personality traits predict depression onsets similarly to self-reported data.

Higher openness and depressivity from parents incrementally predict depression after controlling for self-reports.

Multi-informant approaches improve depression prediction in adolescent girls.

Abstract

Certain personality traits and facets are well-known risk factors that predict first-onset depression during adolescence. However, prior research predominantly relied on self-reported data, which has limitations as a source of personality information. Reports from close informants have the potential to increase the predictive power of personality on first-onsets of depression in adolescents. With easy access to adolescents’ behaviors across settings and time, parents may provide important additional information about their children’s personality. The same personality trait(s) and facet(s) rated by selves (mean age 14.4 years old) and biological parents at baseline were used to prospectively predict depression onsets among 442 adolescent girls during a 72-month follow-up. First, bivariate logistic regression was used to examine whether parent-reported personality measures predicted adolescent girls’ depression onsets; then multivariate logistic regression was used to test whether parent reports provided additional predictive power above and beyond self-reports of same trait or facet. Parent-reported personality traits and facets predicted adolescents’ depression onsets, similar to findings using self-reported data. After controlling for the corresponding self-report measures, parent-reported higher openness (at the trait level) and higher depressivity (at the facet-level) incrementally predicted first-onset of depression in the sample. Findings demonstrated additional variance contributed by parent-reported personality measures and validated a multi-informant approach in using personality to prospectively predict onsets of depression in adolescent girls.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10802-024-01186-w.