Abstract
The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) both measure emotional and behavioral problems in children and adolescents, and scores on the two instruments are highly correlated. When administrative needs compel practitioners to change the instrument used or data from the two measures are combined to perform pooled analyses, it becomes necessary to compare scores on the two instruments. To enable such comparisons, we score linked three domains (Internalizing, Externalizing, and Total Problems) of the CBCL and SDQ in three age groups spanning 2–17 years. After assessing linking assumptions, we compared item response theory (IRT) and equipercentile linking methods to identify the most statistically justifiable link, ultimately selecting equipercentile linking with loglinear smoothing due to its minimal bias and the ability to link raw SDQ scores with both T-scores and raw scores from the CBCL.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 233-246 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Psychological assessment |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2022 |
Funding
Data collection and preliminary analyses were sponsored by the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program, Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health, under Award Number U24OD023319 with co-funding from the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR; Person Reported Outcomes Core). This study was not preregistered. We have no conflicts of interest to disclose
Keywords
- Assessment
- Child behavior checklist
- Equating
- Linking
- Strengths and difficulties questionnaire
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Clinical Psychology
- Psychiatry and Mental health
