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The Child Behaviour Checklist and the Rutter Parental Questionnaire: a comparison between two screening instruments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Eric Fombonne*
Affiliation:
Centre Alfred Binet, Paris, France
*
1Address for correspondence: Dr Eric Fombonne, Centre Alfred Binet, 76 Avenue Edison, 75013 Paris, France

Synopsis

In order to carry out an epidemiological survey of child psychiatric disorders in a community sample, the Child Behaviour Checklist was chosen as a parental questionnaire for screening in the first stage of the study. A French version of this instrument was developed and a pilot study of the scale was completed on a clinical sample (N = 127). As a criterion to gauge its validity, the Rutter scale was used as a concurrent measure. The correlation coefficient between the total scores of the two scales is 0·79, and ranges between 0·22 and 0·96 for individual items. A linear regression analysis, using the total score of the Rutter scale as an independent variable, predicts a value of 41 as the optimal cut-off to be used for the Child Behaviour Checklist. Comparative properties (reliability and time of completion) of the two scales are presented and discussed.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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