The Aberrant Behavior Checklist and the Behavior Problems Inventory: convergent and divergent validity
Section snippets
Participants
Participants were 226 adults with mental retardation who lived at a medium-size developmental center in Louisiana. Demographic characteristics (gender, age and level of mental retardation) are shown in Table 1. Over 45% of the participants had at least one clinical psychiatric diagnosis. One individual had three psychiatric diagnoses, 13 had two, and 103 had one. Stereotyped Movement Disorder (n=39; 17.3%) was the most prevalent diagnosis, followed by Bipolar Disorder (n=11; 4.9%), Pervasive
Results
Data analysis was performed on subscale and total scores. Only the frequency scales of the BPI were used here since correlations between the frequency and severity scales were high (.93 for Self-Injurious Behavior, .92 for Stereotyped Behavior, and .87 for Aggression/Destruction; N=226). Table 2 contains the means, standard deviations, and the range of the ABC and BPI subscale scores. Neither the ABC nor the BPI had normally distributed data.
Discussion
To recap, this study was designed to assess cross-validity of the ABC and BPI. This was accomplished by exploring three questions.
We predicted that individuals with elevated BPI scores would also have higher ABC subscale scores than individuals with low BPI scores. The data unequivocally confirmed that, and they also indicated that the covariance between the two instruments differed across subscales. One would expect this if the scales were to cross-validate each other in a convergent and
Acknowledgements
This research was supported in part by Grant #R215K010121 from the US Department of Education. The authors appreciate the critical comments and helpful suggestions by John W. Jacobson on an earlier draft of this manuscript.
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2018, Research in Developmental DisabilitiesCitation Excerpt :While there was considerable variation (59.9–92.3%) in the remaining 10 settings, all made substantial and relatively steady progress towards achieving the standards set. The primary hypothesised outcome (reduction in challenging behaviour) was measured through the Aberrant Behavior Checklist-Community (ABC), a reliable and valid measure of the severity of challenging behaviour (Rojahn, Aman, Matson, & Mayville, 2003). Baseline questionnaires were completed prior to group allocation by staff who knew each adult well, typically their key worker.
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