Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
New researchThe Child Behavior Checklist Dysregulation Profile in Preschool Children: A Broad Dysregulation Syndrome
Section snippets
Factorial Structure of DP
DP was originally proposed as a proxy for juvenile bipolar disorder12; however, subsequent research has indicated that the profile does not serve well as an indicator for this disorder.13 Currently, there is an ongoing debate on how DP is best conceptualized. Some argue that DP represents a single syndrome of dysregulation that is not included in dominant nosologies of child problem behavior.2, 4 Others postulate that phenotypic manifestations of dysregulation represent comorbid disorders.14
Participants
General practitioners, pediatricians, and well-baby clinics in the province of Utrecht, the Netherlands, were invited to refer children 3.5 to 5.5 years of age with externalizing behavior problems for clinical assessment at the Outpatient Clinic for Preschool Children with Behavioral Problems, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Medical Centre Utrecht. Clinically referred children (n = 189) were included when they scored at or above the 90th percentile on the Attention
Correlations and Factorial Structure of DP
Correlations between the AAA scales were 0.619 and 0.679 (Aggressive Behavior and Attention Problems), 0.501 and 0.388 (Aggressive Behavior and Anxious/Depressed), and 0.371 and 0.324 (Anxious/Depressed and Attention Problems) for parent- and teacher-reported problem behavior, respectively.
The results of the factor analyses are shown in Table 1. The results were similar for parent- and teacher-reported problem behavior. The model showed a very good fit to the data, and the fit significantly
Discussion
Previous research has provided compelling evidence indicating that DP is valuable in identifying children who are seriously at risk in their development.6, 7 Yet, to date, there is no consensus on the conceptual meaning and preferred operationalization of DP, although this could substantially increase its clinical and scientific usefulness. We addressed this concern by testing and validating the factor structure of parent- and teacher-reported DP in a sample of predominantly clinically referred
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Clinical guidance is available at the end of this article.
Disclosure: Prof. Espy has received research support from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Ms. Geeraerts recently became part of the Consortium on Individual Development (NWO grant number 024.001.003), which is funded through the Gravitation program of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. Prof. Deković, Dr. Bunte, Dr. Schoemaker, Prof. Prinzie, Prof. van Baar, Prof. Matthys, and Ms. Deutz report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.