Sinhala translation of child behaviour checklist: validity and reliability.
OBJECTIVE
To translate the child behaviour checklist (CBCL) into Sinhala and validate it for assessment of mental health status of children aged 5-10 years.


METHODS
Translation/back-translation method was used to translate the English CBCL into Sinhala. Each item in the Sinhala CBCL (CBCL-S) was rated by mental health professionals to determine semantics, content, and conceptual validity types. To ascertain criterion validity, total scores obtained for CBCL-S by administering it to parents or parent surrogates of 49 girls and 80 boys aged 5-10 years attending the specialist psychiatry clinics and 69 boys and 69 girls in the same age group from the community were compared with clinical diagnoses by a child psychiatrist. Receiver operator characteristic curves were drawn to obtain the cut-off points in CBCL-S for boys and girls separately.


RESULTS
Semantics, content, and conceptual and criterion validity of CBCL-S were satisfactory. At the cut-off level of 39, CBCL-S had a sensitivity of 90% and a specificity of 88% for boys and a sensitivity of 89% and a specificity of 92% for girls. Internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and inter-interviewer reliability of CBCL-S were satisfactory.


CONCLUSIONS
CBCL-S is a valid and reliable instrument to measure mental health status of Sinhalese children aged 5-10 years in Sri Lanka.
Senaratna
B C V
BC
Community Medicine, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura. chamaravs@yahoo.com
Perera
H
H
Fonseka
P
P
D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008603:Mental Health; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity