Overview
editThe Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment (ASEBA)[1], created by Thomas Achenbach, is collection of questionnaires used to assess adaptive and maladaptive behavior and overall functioning in individuals. The system includes report forms for multiple informants - the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) is used for caregivers to fill out ratings of their child's behavior, the Youth Self Report Form (YSR) is used for children to rate their own behavior, and the Teacher Report Form (TRF) is used for teachers to rate their pupil's behavior. The ASEBA seeks to capture consistencies or variations in behavior across different situations and with different interaction partners[2].
The ASEBA is used in a variety of settings, including mental health, school, research, and forensic settings.
The ASEBA exists for multiple age groups, including preschool-aged children, school-aged children, adults, and older adults. Scores for individuals in each age group are norm-referenced, . The ASEBA has been translated in one hundred languages, and has a variety of multicultural applications[3]. Each report form in the ASEBA System has 113 items, but there is not a one-to-one correspondence between each individual item across the different report forms.
Age Ranges
editThe Child Behavior Checklist exists in several versions, depending on the age of the individual reporting about their behavior:
Preschool
editFor the preschool version of the CBCL (CBCL/2-3), parents (and others who interact with the child in regular contexts) rate the child's behavior. Respondents rate the child's behavior on a 3-point scale (not true, somewhat or sometimes true, and very true or often true), and are instructed to rate the behavior as it occurs now or within the previous two months. This delineation differs from the instructions on other age-versions, due to the fact that rapid development and behavioral changes in the preschool age range are common[4].
Current version: CBCL/1.5-5) - Need to add more information
School-Age
editAdults and Older Adults
editScales
editEmpirically-Based Syndrome Scales
editIn addition to using individual items to describe potential behavioral/emotional problems, the ASEBA is designed to help screen for certain groupings of behavioral traits, or syndromes. These syndrome scales are empirically-derived, meaning that they are based on data from actual children and on statistical analyses that reflect patterns of co-occuring items/behavior[2]. The eight syndrome scales include:
- Anxious/Depressed
- Withdrawn/Depressed
- Somatic Complaints
- Social Problems
- Thought Problems
- Attention Problems
- Rule-Breaking Behavior
- Aggressive Behavior
When compared to the normative samples of data collected with the ASEBA, an individual's score on these scales can fall in the Clinical Range (above the 97th percentile of the normative sample) the Borderline Clinical Range (93rd - 97th percentile of the normative sample), or the Normal Range (below the 93rd percentile of the normative sample).
DSM-Oriented Scales
editConstructing the DSM-Oriented Scales
editIn additional to the ASEBA Syndrome Scales, items from the ASEBA report forms judged to be consistent with DSM criteria for were developed to help mental health professionals
Depressive Problems, Anxiety Problems, Somatic Problems, Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Problems, Oppositional Defiant Problems, Conduct Problems.
Scoring
editPsychometric Properties
editPsychometric Properties
editReliability
editReliability refers to whether the scores are reproducible. Unless otherwise specified, the reliability scores and values come from studies done with a United States population sample.
| Criterion | Rating (adequate, good, excellent, too good*) | Explanation with references |
|---|---|---|
| Norms | Adequate | National probability samples and numerous research studies, including both clinical and nonclinical samples[citation needed] |
| Internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha, split half, etc.) | Excellent; too good for some contexts | Alphas routinely over .94 for both scales, suggesting that scales could be shortened for many uses[citation needed] |
| Inter-rater reliability | Adequate | Designed originally as a self-report scale; parent and youth report correlate about the same as cross-informant scores correlate in general[5] |
| Test-retest reliability (stability | Adequate | r = .85 for the preschool version and r = .90 for the school age version over 6-18 days. Evaluated in initial studies,[2] with data also show high stability in clinical trials[citation needed] |
| Repeatability | Not published | No published studies formally checking repeatability |
Validity describes the evidence that an assessment tool measures what it was supposed to measure. There are many different ways of checking validity. For screening measures such as the CAGE, diagnostic accuracy and discriminative validity are probably the most useful ways of looking at validity.
- ^ "ASEBA Home". www.aseba.org. Retrieved 2016-09-01.
- ^ a b c Achenbach, Thomas; Rescorla, Leslie (2001). Manual for the ASEBA School-Age Forms & Profiles. Burlington, VT: University of Vermont, Research Center for Children, Youth, & Families. pp. 16–17. Cite error: The named reference ":0" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- ^ "ASEBA Home". www.aseba.org. Retrieved 2016-09-01.
- ^ Achenbach, Thomas (1992). Manual for the Child Behavior Checklist/2-3 and 1992 Profile. Burlington, VT: University of Vermont Department of Psychiatry. pp. 2–3.
- ^ Achenbach, TM; McConaughy, SH; Howell, CT (March 1987). "Child/adolescent behavioral and emotional problems: implications of cross-informant correlations for situational specificity". Psychological Bulletin. 101 (2): 213–32. PMID 3562706.