Cross-cultural generalizability of the Conners Parent Rating Scales: Can the US-American factor structure be replicated in a German clinical sample?

Objective: International networks in child psychiatry research increasingly rely on the cross-cultural generalizability of commonly used questionnaire factor structures. The aim of this study is to analyze whether the U.S. fa ctor structure of the Conners Parent Rating Scale (CPRS) can be replicated in a German clinical sample. Method: A German child psychiatry sample-of 1394 children children and adol escents was randomly splitted into halves. One sub-sample was used to calcu late a German factor model by means of exploratory factor analysis. This mo del is tested in comparison with he U.S. model constructed according to Con ners (1989) in the second sub-sample by means of a confirmatory factor anal ysis (LISREL 8). Results: 87% of the path relations in the German and U.S.-American models a re identical. Both models show limitations with regard to their predictive power. As expected, the goodness of fit indices for the German model are so mewhat better than for the U.S; model (GFI = .81;AGFI = .75 versus GFI = .7 6;AGFI = .71), Conclusions: The goodness of fit indices of the CPRS model are less satisfa ctory than those of other studies on the cross-cultural generalizability of factor strucutres of dimensional questionnaires (i.e., De Groot et al., 19 94) However, this is mainly due to restrictions within the model (no multip le factor:loadings). With respect to the cross-cultural generalizability di fferences were found in the impulsiveness/hyperactivity scale. All other sc laes could be well replicated.