Parallel forms of the IJR Behavior Checklist for parents, teachers, and clinicians

It is suggested that the use of multiple informants in diagnostic evaluations exacerbates a major difficulty in the use of symptom checklists--establishing replicable syndromes across data sources. The present study attempted to develop symptom scales for 3 parallel checklists for 3 types of informants to maximize the comparability of data across informants without sacrificing all of the distinctiveness of different evaluators' frames of reference. Separate cluster analyses of 450 parent checklists, 300 teacher checklists, and 299 clinician checklists yielded 9 syndromes that were comparable across all 3 informants, 4 that were identifiable in the data from only 2 informants, and 5 that were unique to the data from a single type of informant. (53 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).