A NEW SELF-REPORT SCALE FOR ASSESSMENT OF ADOLESCENT PSYCHOPATHOLOGY - FACTOR STRUCTURE, RELIABILITY, VALIDITY, AND DIAGNOSTIC SENSITIVITY

This paper describes four studies on self-reported problems in 2,243 a dolescent males and females, 12 to 17 years of age. In Study 1, princi pal-axis factoring of 102 items covering 11 problem domains revealed s ix factors comprising 49.5% of the variance. Study 2 used confirmatory factor analysis of a 64-item reduced set on a new sample of 408 adole scents. Goodness-of-fit indicators suggested that the six-factor model had excellent fit to the data. Study 3 used data from the 2,157 adole scents used in the first two studies. Coefficient alphas ranged from . 83 to .92. Median test-retest reliability for the six factors was .86. There was a consistent structure of the correlation matrix across age and gender. Study 4 was a study of criterion validity, using an addit ional sample of 86 children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disor der (ADHD). Sensitivity and specificity were high, with an overall dia gnostic efficiency of 83%. This new self-report scale, the Conners/Wel ls Adolescent Self-Report of Symptoms (CASS), may provide a useful com ponent of a multimodal assessment of adolescent psychopathology.