Reliability and Validity of the Thinking Skills Inventory, a Screening Tool for Cross-Diagnostic Skill Deficits Underlying Youth Behavioral Challenges

Deficits in a range of skill domains (including executive functioning, emotion regulation, social cognition and language/communication) are associated with disrupted youth behavior and functioning across mental health diagnoses. The identification of skill deficits are important for effective treatment planning, particularly for personalized interventions. While there are multiple ways to assess these skills, parent/caregiver reports represent an important information source. To date, no single, brief measure has been developed that gathers parent/caregiver ratings across this range of constructs. We have developed a short caregiver-report questionnaire (the Thinking Skills Inventory; TSI), to screen for skill deficits. Here, we examine the reliability and validity of this rating scale in 384 youth who were consecutively referred for neuropsychiatric evaluation. A primary caregiver completed the TSI as well as other established measures. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses support five subscales on the TSI: Attention and Working Memory, Language and Communication, Emotion Regulation, Cognitive Flexibility, and Social Thinking Skills. The subscales showed moderate to high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alphas range from 0.84 to 0.91). Correlations with established caregiver-report measures confirm their convergent and discriminant validity, and associations with multiple clinical diagnoses and cross-diagnostic aggressive behavior further support the utility of the scale for our intended purpose. In sum, this free, brief measure is a valid and reliable way to identify variation in skill domains relevant to a range of psychopathology. The TSI may be useful in youth mental health settings to assist with treatment planning and to inform referral for further evaluation.