Talk:Childhood Autism Rating Scale

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Removal of propietary content

In the next day or so I will be removing the CARS test items and the explicit language of the response scale from the article. The CARS is a proprietary instrument--that is, the authors of the original journal articles assigned the copyright to the comercial test publisher WPS, 12031 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025. Any queries can be sent to the attention of Rights and Permissions at that address. The CARS is considered a professional test and is provided solely to qualified mental health and school personnel

I am a psychologist/test developer, 20 years head of the research department for WPS. While I am not a lawyer, I have dealt with Intellectual Property issues with regard to WPS's products --and through the test publishers trade association, those of many other publishers--for most of those years. Yes, there are tests for which copyright has expired (e.g., the Rorschach), but the CARS in not one of them. No, the fact that the instrument was once published in an academic journal does not mean that it can be reproduced subsequently without explicit written permission of the current copyright holder.

It seemed best to have an opportunity for this issue to be considered. I assume that some may may object to the removal. If so, I suggest that we ask the Wikipedia supervisors to monitor this discussion and help insure that a proper outcome is permitted to be implemented. Plskmn (talk) 03:27, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

The CARS has been revised and re-released as the CARS-2. It would be good if someone could update this page to reflect that change. In addition, most of the citations on the current page are over a decade old. The field of autism research has made many, many advances in that time. I very much doubt that, even in its recently revised form, the CARS would be considered a "gold standard." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Plskmn (talk • contribs) 16:49, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Boy, you aren't kidding (about the "gold standard" or about the vast research advances in the field in the past FIVE years, let alone the past twenty-plus). The CARS and CARS-2 certainly deserve a prominent place in the ever-evolving history of PDD assessment, but by no means are they flawless paragons of diagnostic perfection, as this Wikipedia entry currently paints them. I use the CARS-2 quite regularly, and it's very useful for what it is. But, as with any psychological assessment tool, it's not perfect, and it's not independently useful as a diagnostic tool (i.e., it would be a grave mistake to make PDD diagnoses using only the CARS-2, without the corroboration of multiple other evaluation methods). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.30.118.66 (talk) 07:50, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Capitalizing name of test

The first letter for every important word in the title of psychological tests and rating scales are capitalized. This is common practice on Wikipedia. For example, Thematic Apperception Test, Child Behavior Checklist, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory. I made changes in the text of the article, but since I am not registered, I cannot move the article to a renamed article. Could someone please do so? Thanks. 75.177.156.78 (talk) 22:05, 27 June 2014 (UTC)