Reliability of parent report measures of behaviour in children with Down syndrome.
A J Esbensen, E K Hoffman, R Shaffer and 3 others
PMID 30022564WHAT IT FOUND
For children with Down syndrome, broad behaviour scores were more consistent than individual scores, especially somatic and some anxiety-related scores.
Clinicians should not rely on one score alone to judge emotional symptoms.
Key findings
01Internalizing Problems had good internal consistency, while Externalizing Problems and Total Problems had excellent internal consistency.
02Parent and teacher agreement on most CBCL and DSM-oriented subscales was statistically significant, but the agreement values ranged from poor to moderate.
03Somatic Complaints, Rule-Breaking Behavior, and Affective Problems had poor internal consistency.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The data were combined after the fact from studies with different purposes, so the reliability questions were not the original design of those studies. Teacher forms were missing for 12 children in clinical charts, 12 children during school break, and 2 children in one study, so parent-teacher agreement was not available for all 88 children. Validity comparisons with the Aberrant Behavior Checklist and Nisonger Child Behavior Rating Forms used only 29 parents, not all 88 children. Test-retest reliability and sensitivity to change over time were not assessed, so the study cannot show whether scores detect change over time. The sample was 61.4% male and 83.0% Caucasian, so findings may not apply to children with Down syndrome from other backgrounds or to girls. The authors state that the sample size may have affected the validity findings.
Declared interests
The article metadata lists NIH extramural and non-U.S. government research support. The article text does not include an author conflict-of-interest declaration.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read a single anxiety or somatic score as a definite diagnosis in a child with Down syndrome. Those scores had poor to acceptable internal consistency and only poor to moderate parent-teacher agreement, and the study did not test whether the scores detect change over time.