CONVERGENT AND CRITERION-RELATED VALIDITY OF THE BEHAVIOR ASSESSMENT SYSTEM FOR CHILDREN PARENT RATING-SCALE

Examined aspects of the validity of the Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC; Reynolds & Kamphaus, 1992) Parent Rating Scale (BASC- PRS) in 156 children with cross-setting disruptive behavior. The BASC- PRS is a recently published multidimensional measure composed of conce ptually derived scales created for use in conjunction with psychiatric and educational classification systems. Convergent validity was asses sed through correlations of BASC-PRS scale scores with scale scores on the Child Behavior Checklist/4-18 (CBCL/4-18; Achenbach, 1991b). Crit erion-related validity was evaluated as the ability of BASC-PRS adn CB CL/4-18 scales to predict membership in diagnostic groupings (no diagn osis, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD] only, and ADHD w ith a comorbid externalizing disorder) derived via structured intervie ws based on the third, revised edition of the Diagnostic and Statistic al Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 1987) . Results showed the validity of the BASC-PRS to be comparable to that of the CBCL/4-18. Given its conceptually derived scalers, the BASC-PR S may prove to be a useful tool for assessing childhood disruptive beh avior.