title: Capturing Age-group Differences and Developmental Change with the BASC Parent Rating Scales.
abstract: Estimation of age-group differences and intra-individual change across distinct developmental periods is often challenged by the use of age-appropriate (but non-parallel) measures. We present a short version of the Behavior Assessment System (Reynolds & Kamphaus, 1998), Parent Rating Scales for Children (PRS-C) and Adolescents (PRS-A), which uses only their common-items to derive estimates of the initial constructs optimized for developmental studies. Measurement invariance of a three-factor model (Externalizing, Internalizing, Adaptive Skills) was tested across age-groups (161 mothers using PRS-C; 200 mothers using PRS-A) and over time (115 mothers using PRS-C at baseline and PRS-A five years later) with the original versus short PRS. Results indicated that the short PRS holds a sufficient level of invariance for a robust estimation of age-group differences and intra-individual change, as compared to the original PRS, which held only weak invariance leading to flawed developmental inferences. Importance of test-content parallelism for developmental studies is discussed.
authors.affiliation: Pace University, New York, NY, USA ; Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
authors.forename: Baptiste
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Barbot
authors.affiliation: Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
authors.forename: Sascha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hein
authors.affiliation: Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA ; Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Suniya S
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Luthar
authors.affiliation: Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA ; Columbia University, New York, NY, USA ; Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia.
authors.forename: Elena L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Grigorenko
keywords: BASC; developmental change; measurement invariance; parent rating scale; scale parallelism