Is it prudent to administer all items for each Child Behavior Checklist cross-informant syndrome? Evaluating the psychometric properties of the Youth Self-Report dimensions with confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory.
Through surveying of children in 10 nations with parent, teacher, and Youth Self-Report (YSR) forms of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), cross-informant syndromes (CISs) were derived and cross-validated by sample-dependent methodology. Generalizing CBCL syndromes and norms to nations excluded from its normative sample is problematic. This study used confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) to test factor model fit for CISs on the YSR responses of 625 Jamaican children ages 11 to 18 years. Item response theory (IRT), a sample-independent methodology, was used to estimate the psychometric properties of individual items on each dimension. CFAs indicated poor to moderate model-to-data fit. Across all syndromes, IRT analyses revealed that more than 3/4 of the cross-informant items yielded little information. Eliminating such items could be cost effective in terms of administration time yet improve the measures discrimination across syndrome severity levels.
Lambert
Michael Canute
MC
Department of Human Development and Family Studies, University of Missouri-Columbia, 314 Gentry Hall, Columbia, Missouri 65211-7700, USA. lambertmc@missouri.edu
Schmitt
Neal
N
Samms-Vaughan
Maureen E
ME
An
Jeong Shin
JS
Fairclough
Maureen
M
Nutter
Christine A
CA
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007563:Jamaica; D008297:Male; D015233:Models, Statistical; D015588:Observer Variation; D010552:Personality Assessment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015203:Reproducibility of Results