Child Behavior Checklist for Ages 6-18 (CBCL/6-18) : estudo exploratório de suas evidências de validade e precisão em uma amostra brasileira

Abstract

The Child Behavior Checklist for Ages 6-18 (CBCL) aims to evaluate behavior and social competence problems of children and adolescents aged 6 to 18 years, from information provided by parents. The instrument identifies syndromes such as anxiety/depression, somatic complaints, attention problems, aggressive behavior, social problems, thought problems and rule violations. Empirical studies on evidence of validity and accuracy of the instrument in Brazil are sporadic, with variable results, and still without a determined current organization that points to its evaluative efficacy, not even its standardization. Based on this demand, this study aimed to investigate the evidence of validity of this instrument. Specifically, content validity study, validity based on external variables (criterion), internal structure and accuracy. Three groups of participants were investigated: (1) three expert judges in the area of Human Development and Child Psychopathology; (2) 94 parents of children and adolescents aged between six and 18 years. This sample was divided into two groups: (a) parents of children and adolescents without behavioral complaints (GSQ); and (b) parents of children and adolescents with intellectual disability (GDI). (3) 202 parents of children and adolescents aged between six and 18. According to the procedures applied, the second and third groups were searched in the following institutions: Mato Grosso State School, Parents' Association and friends of the Exceptional (APAE). For the study that investigated content-based validity evidence, the first group was used, to which the protocols for CBCL evaluation were sent and the data analyses were performed to agree between them by means of the Kappa de Fleiss statistical test (k). On the other hand, what sought to investigate the criterion validity, that is, if the CBCL would be able to identify certain groups, in the case of children diagnosed with Intellectual Disability, the "t-test" was used and for this analysis comparisons were made between the GSQ and the GDI. In the study of the evidence of validity based on the internal structure, it involved the Confirmatory Factor Analysis, to confirm or not the factor structure proposed internationally for the test. In turn, the precision study used the internal consistency analysis, which performed the Cronbach’s Alpha and Mddonald’s Omega test for the total test and each of the factors. And the research results pointed out that, content validity was found for most items. However, it is believed that it is recommended that the items are still evaluated by more specialists, that is, with the increase of the sample of judges experts in the area and that it is necessary to review the items mainly as to their theoretical representations. Evidence of criterion validity was found, as there was worse performance of the group with children with DI in most scales(seven of the nine scales). Even so, there is a need for larger samples, which also control the level of Intellectual Disability, so that there is greater security in the generalization of clinical data. Regarding the evidences of validates of the internal structure of the CBCL by means of the Confirmatory Factor Analysis, acceptable models were not identified according to the factors proposed in the instrument. It is suggested that a consistent identification of its theoretical bases is necessary, as well as the revision and correction of the model to obtain considerable results. Regarding the accuracy of CBCL, the results pointed out that for all factors, internal consistency values were considered good. Therefore, it is seen thatit is still necessary to conduct new studies to evaluate the psychometric properties of CBCL. However, the results found here, although brief, are of great value for such recognition.