Clinical Assessment of Child and Adolescent Personality and ...

206 chapter 8 behavioral observationsThe three behaviors that showed poorinter-observer agreement were watchingpeers, norm-setting statements, and supportivestatements.Family Interaction CodingSystemOne of the most common uses of behavioralobservations is to observe parent–childinteractions, especially thoseassociated with childhood conduct problems(Frick & Loney, 2000). For example,Patterson and colleagues at the OregonSocial Learning Center have developeda direct observational system designed toassess children’s conduct problems in thehome and to assess the interactional patternsin which the conduct problems areoften embedded. The Family InteractionCoding System (FICS; Patterson, 1982)is composed of 29 code categories thatinclude both child behaviors and parentalreactions to the child behaviors. These categoriesare summarized in Table 8.5. TheTable 8.5 Target Behaviors in the FamilyInteraction Coding SystemApproval High rate a Physicalnegative aAttention Humiliate a PhysicalpositiveCommand Ignore a ReceiveCommandnegative a Laugh SelfstimulationCompliance Noncompliance a TalkCry a Negativism a Tease aDisapproval a Normative TouchDependency a No response Whine aDestructivenessPlay Yell aReproduced with author’s permission from G. R. Patterson(1982). Coerceive family process. Eugene, OR:Castalia.aDenotes aversive behaviors that are included in theTotal Aversive Behavior (TAB) score.goal of the FICS was to observe childreninteracting with family members in naturalhome settings. However, as describedby Patterson (1982), several restrictionshad to be made in the home for the observationalsessions. Specifically, to use theFICS, all family members must be presentduring the pre-arranged observation timeswith no guests present, and the family islimited to being present in two rooms ofthe house. There can be no telephone callsout (only brief answers to incoming calls)and no TV. Finally, there is to be no talkingto the observers during coding.The FICS was designed to have datacoded continuously and to provide asequential account of the interactionsbetween a child and other family members.The behavior of the child and the person(s)with whom the child interacts are coded insequence. After initial coding, many of thechild’s behaviors are summarized in a rateper-minutevariable that combines bothfrequency and duration of the behavior.However, the most frequently used scorefrom the FICS is the Total Aversive Behavior(TAB) score which is a sum of the numberof aversive behaviors which occurredduring the observational session.Patterson (1982) describes a moderatelevel of inter-observer agreement for mostcode categories of the FICS, with the categoriesof Negativism and Self-Stimulationshowing the most questionable levels ofagreement. One week test-retest reliabilityof the TAB was studied in a sample of 27boys and was found to be quite high (.78).The TAB was also found to discriminatebetween families of children referred forbehavior problems and nonreferred familiesand has proven to be sensitive to familyfocusedtreatment for children’s conductproblems (Patterson, 1982). Althoughmost of the individual code categories ofthe FICS can be coded consistently bytwo observers, psychometric informationis generally limited to the global index ofaversive behavior, the TAB.