THE DEVELOPMENTAL BEHAVIOR CHECKLIST - THE DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATIONOF AN INSTRUMENT TO ASSESS BEHAVIORAL AND EMOTIONAL DISTURBANCE IN CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS WITH MENTAL-RETARDATION

Describes the development and validation of the Developmental Behavior Checklist (DBC), a standardized instrument completed by lay informant s to assess behavioral and emotional disturbance in children and adole scents with mental retardation (MR). Items describing common behaviora l and emotional problems in this population were generated by extracti ng descriptions from 664 case files of children and adolescents with b ehavior disorders seen at a specialist developmental assessment servic e over 12 years. These items were reduced to a set of 96 items adminis tered to a sample of 1,093 children and adolescents with mental retard ation and then submitted to a principal components analysis. Sir inter pretable and partly validated subscales were obtained which explained 36% of the total variance and had satisfactory internal consistency. I nterrater and test-retest agreement were satisfactory for both total s cale score and for scores on each of the subscales. Good evidence of c oncurrent validity was provided by substantial positive correlations b etween total scores on the DBC completed by lay informants and the rat ings of experienced psychiatrists based upon interviews and scores on two standardized instruments that must be completed by health professi onals The discriminative validity of the total score as assessed by ar ea under the ROC curve was excellent (92%). Standardized norms for the DEC are derived from an epidemiological study of behavior problems in children and adolescents with mental retardation undertaken in two Au stralian States. Norms are available for the mild, moderate, severe, a nd profound MR groups and for the MR population as a whole.