title: Child behavior checklist clinical scales discriminate referred youth with autism spectrum disorder: a preliminary study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To evaluate the properties of clinical scales of the Child Behavior Checklist in discriminating referred children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) (autistic disorder, Asperger's disorder, and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified) from psychiatrically referred children without ASDs.
  
  
  METHODS
  Comparisons were made between children with ASDs (n = 65) with intelligence quotient >70 and children without ASDs (N = 83) on the clinical scales of the Child Behavior Checklist. Stepwise logistic regression was used to identify those scales that best predicted ASDs when compared with the non-ASD comparison group. Receiver operating characteristic curves examined the ability of the significant predictor T-scores to identify ASDs versus the non-ASD subjects.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Withdrawn, Social Problems, and Thought Problems T-scores were the best independent predictors of ASD status. The Withdrawn + Social + Thought Problems T-scores yielded an area under the curve of 0.86, indicating an 86% chance that a randomly selected sample of ASD subject will have abnormal scores on these scales than a randomly selected sample of non-ASD subjects.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These findings suggest that a new Child Behavior Checklist-ASD profile consisting of the Child Behavior Checklist-Withdrawn, Social, and Thought Problems scales could serve as a rapid and cost-effective screening instrument to help identify cases likely to meet clinical criteria for ASDs in the clinical setting.
authors.affiliation: Clinical and Research Program in Pediatric Psychopharmacology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02114, USA. jbiederman@partners.org
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Biederman
authors.forename: Carter R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Petty
authors.forename: Ronna
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Fried
authors.forename: Janet
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wozniak
authors.forename: Jamie A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Micco
authors.forename: Aude
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Henin
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Doyle
authors.forename: Gagan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Joshi
authors.forename: Maribel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Galdo
authors.forename: Meghan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kotarski
authors.forename: Janet
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Caruso
authors.forename: Dayna
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Yorks
authors.forename: Stephen V
authors.initials: SV
authors.lastname: Faraone
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D020817:Asperger Syndrome / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D019958:Attention Deficit and Disruptive Behavior Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D057189:Checklist; D002648:Child; D002659:Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007406:Interview, Psychological; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D019964:Mood Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D010552:Personality Assessment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012017:Referral and Consultation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results