ADVANCES IN EMPIRICALLY BASED ASSESSMENT OF CHILDRENS BEHAVIORAL AND EMOTIONAL-PROBLEMS

Recent revisions of the scoring profiles for the Child Behavior Checkl ist (CBCL), Teacher's Report Form (TRF), and Youth Self-Report (YSR) r epresent important advances in empirically based assessment of childre n's behavioral and emotional problems. This article reviews research t o derive cross-informant syndrome scales for the 1991 profiles of the CBCL, TRF, and YSR, focusing on findings that are particularly relevan t for the practice of school psychology. Studies of reliability and va lidity are summarized, as well as findings on cross-informant agreemen t, stability of parent ratings, cross-informant prediction, and compar isons of profile scores for children with serious emotional disturbanc e and learning disabilities.