Thomas J. Yager

Impairment in the Epidemiological Measurement of Childhood Psychopathology in the Community

The desirability of incorporating a measure of impairment to the categorization of childhood psychopathology in the community is examined. The use of the Childrens Global Assessment Scale (CGAS) for this purpose is recommended. The choice of 61 (definite case) and 71 (probable case) as cutpoints on the Childrens Global Assessment Scale is supported empirically by the data on service utilization, parental perceived need, and behavior problem scores obtained in the Puerto Rico Child Psychiatry Epidemiological Study.

The Child Behavior Checklist Nonclinical Standardization Samples: Should They Be Utilized as Norms?

The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) is an extensively standardized parent-completed checklist of competencies and behavior problems of children and adolescents. Clinicians and researchers frequently assume that the published scale scores for the CBCL nonclinical sample are stable even across demographically heterogeneous populations. The present study, a school-based postal questionnaire survey, was designed to compare the CBCL nonclinical sample with a different community sample collected in the U.S. The parents of 530 children, 6 to 10 years of age (73% of the eligible sample), attending one public school system in northern New Jersey were recruited. Mean total behavior problem scores for both sexes in the school sample were dramatically higher than the CBCL nonclinical sample even after removing clinically referred cases from the analyses. Additionally, in contrast to the manual, marked race/ethnicity effects were found in the male subsample. These results, in conjunction with those from other studies, raise serious questions about the common practice of using the CBCL norms as a yardstick for sample comparisons.

Gender-related assessment of childhood play

Parent-report based scales for the assessment of sex-dimorphic behavior are an important tool in research on psychosexual differentiation and its disorders. This paper presents the factor analysis and corresponding scale development for the slightly expanded Child Game Participation Questionnaire (Bates & Bentler, 1973), based on the parents of a demographically diverse school sample of 355 girls and 333 boys aged 6 to 10 years. Evidence supporting each of three theoretical positions in gender assessment — unidimensional bipolar, two-dimensional unipolar, and multidimensional — was provided. Effect sizes were unusually large for gender, but small for age, socioeconomic level, and race/ethnicity.

THE ROLES OF COMBAT EXPOSURE, PERSONAL VULNERABILITY, AND INVOLVEMENT IN HARM TO CIVILIANS OR PRISONERS IN VIETNAM WAR-RELATED POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

The diagnosis posttraumatic stress disorder was introduced in 1980 amid debate about the psychiatric toll of the Vietnam War. There is controversy, however, about its central assumption that potentially traumatic stressors are more important than personal vulnerability in causing the disorder. We tested this assumption with data from a rigorously diagnosed male subsample (n = 260) from the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study. Combat exposure, prewar vulnerability, and involvement in harming civilians or prisoners were examined, with only combat exposure proving necessary for disorder onset. Although none of the three factors proved sufficient, estimated onset reached 97% for veterans high on all three, with harm to civilians or prisoners showing the largest independent contribution. Severity of combat exposure proved more important than prewar vulnerability in onset; prewar vulnerability was at least as important in long-term persistence. Implications for the primacy of the stressor assumption, further research, and policy are discussed.

Feminine Gender Role Behavior and Academic Achievement: Their Relation in a Community Sample of Middle Childhood Boys.

Previous studies on the relationship between gender role behavior and academic achievement and/or cognitive abilities in boys have led to somewhat conflicting hypotheses. The present study extends these hypotheses to a broadly representative school-based sample of boys (ages 6–10 years) and asks whether feminine and/or masculine gender role behavior is associated with lower academic achievement in general as well as specifically in math, and whether these relationships increase with age. The parents of 333 boys (74% of the eligible sample) who attended one public school system in northern New Jersey agreed to participate. The survey included two psychometrically robust gender role behavior questionnaires as well as the Child Behavior Checklist, which contains a scale concerned with school achievement, all based on parental report. In addition, the results of the routinely school-administered California Achievement Tests were analyzed. The results only weakly and somewhat inconsistently supported the hypotheses. We conclude that variations of gender role behavior as seen in a school-based sample are only marginally correlated with school achievement. The correlation patterns vary with the aspect of gender role behavior—masculinity, femininity—under investigation and with age.