R. Walter et al., RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF A GERMAN VERS ION OF THE YOUTH SELF-REPORT, Zeitschrift für Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie, 22(1), 1994, pp. 23-38
The aim of the present study was to investigate certain aspects of the
reliability and validity of a German version of the Youth Self-Report
(total behavior problem score) and to establish norms. In a sample of
252 patients from various child and adolescent psychiatric services a
nd in an unselected sample of 1343 students from nearby schools high c
oefficients of internal consistency and split-half reliability (>0.9)
were obtained. An additional 105 students were tested and then reteste
d after 5 weeks and again the rank correlations were high (boys: 0.86;
girls: 0.90). The patients had higher total problem scores than the n
on-patients matched for age, sex, socioeconomic status, type of school
and status as a foreigner. Patients with a diagnosis on axis 1 (psych
iatric syndrome) or axis 5 (abnormal psychosocial situations) of the M
ulti-axial Classification Scheme were more maladjusted (higher total b
ehavior problem score) than those without such a diagnosis. As expecte
d, the score for the inpatients (N=99) was higher than for the out-pat
ients (N=153). Because of the encouraging results, which justify furth
er use of the Youth Self-Report, norms for the total behavior problem
score (T-scores, percentiles) were calculated separately for the boys
(N=2085) and girls (N=2119) from the general population (10-17 years o
f age).