The Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children-Revised Version (DISC-R): III. Concurrent criterion validity.
OBJECTIVE
To examine the concurrent criterion validity of the Revised Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC-R), a structured lay-administered instrument designed for use in community studies, under conditions designed to provide strict controls for information and method variance.


METHODS
The DISC-R was compared with a semistructured clinical interview that covered a similar information base as the DISC-R, used standardized ratings to record symptom information, and, similar to the DISC-R, was scored by DSM-III-R-based computerized diagnostic algorithms. Subjects were 74 child and adolescent clinic attendees and their adult custodians.


RESULTS
Overall, moderate levels of agreement were found between DISC-R and clinician-generated diagnoses; these findings were tempered, however, by the fact that the validation interview was less reliable than the DISC-R.


CONCLUSIONS
Although these findings provide preliminary support for the use of the DISC-R, they cast some doubt on the adequacy of clinician-generated diagnoses as validation criteria and suggest that alternate approaches to the assessment of validation should be pursued.
College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, NY.
J
J
Piacentini
D
D
Shaffer
P
P
Fisher
M
M
Schwab-Stone
M
M
Davies
P
P
Gioia
D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D000465:Algorithms; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015203:Reproducibility of Results