Clinical Assessment of Child and Adolescent Personality and ...

chapter 7 Parent and Teacher Rating Scales159were designed to more closely align scoresthat were available from these instrumentsto current diagnostic nomenclature.Administration and ScoringThe CBCL is easily administered in 15–20min. The CBCL is somewhat unique inthat adaptive behavior is assessed with acombined fill-in-the-blank and Likert scaleresponse format. In addition, some of theproblem behavior items require the parentto elaborate on or describe the problemendorsed. This format is advantageous inthat it allows the parent to respond in anopen-ended format. Clinicians can gainaccess to qualitative information of valueusing this format. Open-endedness, however,also has a disadvantage: It may extendadministration time and requires moredecision making on the part of the parent.Hand scoring and computer scoringare available for the CBCL. The CBCLoffers normalized T-scores as the featuredinterpretive scores. Percentile ranks arealso provided. T-scores are available for allscales and three composites: Externalizing,Internalizing, and Total. T-scores are nowalso offered for the Competence scales.The advantages and disadvantages ofusing normalized versus linear T’s aredebatable (see Kline, 1995). On the onehand, the advantage of comparable percentileranks across scales was recognizedby the MMPI-A author team (see Chap.6). Normalized scores, however, clearlychange the shape of the many skewed rawscore distributions forcing the T-score distributionto take a shape that it does notactually take in the general population(see Chap. 2). In addition, the reporting ofT-scores on the CBCL is truncated for theSyndrome and DSM-Oriented scales suchthat low scores are reported simply as T ≤50. For the Competence scales, the distributionis truncated above a T-score of 65and below a T-score of 35.NormingThe norming of the school age CBCL isbased on a national sample of 1,753 childrenaged 6 through 18 years. This samplewas collected in 40 states and the Districtof Columbia (Achenbach & Rescorla,2001). Relevant stratification variablessuch as age, gender, ethnicity, region, andSES were recorded in an attempt to closelymatch US Census statistics on these variables.The respondents were mothers in72% of the cases and fathers in 23% of thecases (5% of the cases used “others”). Sixtypercent of the respondents were classifiedas White, with Hispanics appearing to besomewhat underrepresented (9%). Fiftyonepercent of cases were from a middleSES background, 33% were from an upperSES background, and 16% were from alower SES background. Forty percent ofrespondents were from the southern partof the USA (see Achenbach & Rescorla,2001). From this sample, separate normswere developed for ages 6–11 and 12–18,with each of these groups further delineatedby gender.The norming sample for the preschoolCBCL version for ages 1½–5 was alsorecruited in an attempt to match US Censusstatistics on the same variables. Thissample consisted of 700 respondents (76%mothers, 22% fathers, 2% “others”). Fiftysixpercent of respondents were White,21% African American, 13% Latino, and10% Mixed or Others. In the preschoolnorming sample, 33% of respondentswere from an upper SES background, 49%from middle SES, and 17% from a lowerSES background. Again, 40% of theserespondents were from the southern USA(Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000).Children were excluded from the sampleif they had “received mental health orspecial education classes during the previous12 months” (Achenbach & Rescorla,2001, p. 76). Separate clinical norms arenot offered for the CBCL.