The Children's Global Assessment Scale (CGAS) and Global Assessment of Psychosocial Disability (GAPD) in clinical practice - substance and reliability as judged by intraclass correlations

Studies on the inter-rater reliability on the Children's Global Assessment Scale (CGAS) and the Global Assessment of Psychosocial Disability (GAPD) in volving different subgroups of 145 outpatients from 4 to 16 years of age sh owed fair to substantial intraclass correlations of 0.59 to 0.90. Raters of different training levels participated. Interrater reliability was depende nt on number of ratings per rater, training, available data sources and exp erience. A more detailed description of anchor points resulted in higher in ter-rater agreement by psychiatrists training in child and adolescent psych iatry, but did not influence the inter-rater reliability among more (widely ) experienced raters. Both the CGAS and the GAPD seem to be sufficiently re liable tools in clinical practice. The CGAS seems to be more sensitive to i nter-rater variation than the GAPD.