Factor structure of the developmental behavior checklist using confirmatory factor analysis of polytomous items

Area of Science:

• Psychometrics
• Clinical Psychology
• Developmental Psychology

Background:

• The Developmental Behavior Checklist (DBC) is a 95-item screening tool for behavioral and emotional disturbances in individuals with intellectual deficit (ID).
• It comprises five principal-component derived subscales: Disruptive, Self-Absorbed, Communication Disturbance, Anxiety, and Social Relating.
• Validating these subscales for individual differences research necessitates examining structural stability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To psychometrically evaluate the DBC's subscale structure using item-level data.
• To investigate simple-structure restrictions and the impact of factorially complex items on inter-subscale correlations.
• To assess the suitability of DBC subscales for individual differences research.

Main Methods:

• A polytomous confirmatory factor analysis (PCFA) was performed on the DBC item-level data.
• Factor loadings and inter-factor correlations were analyzed with and without simple-structure restrictions.
• The psychometric properties of the five DBC subscales were examined.

Main Results:

• The two largest subscales, Disruptive/Antisocial and Self-Absorbed, demonstrated robust performance in PCFA models.
• These larger subscales are likely to exhibit minimal bias under unit-weighted scoring and latent factor models.
• Findings for the Communication Disturbance, Social Relating, and Anxiety subscales, while not invalidating their use, highlight areas for careful consideration in individual differences research.

Conclusions:

• The study provides evidence supporting the psychometric integrity of the larger DBC subscales for research applications.
• Researchers utilizing the smaller DBC subscales in individual differences studies should be aware of specific psychometric considerations.
• This research contributes to the ongoing validation of the DBC as a tool for assessing behavioral and emotional disturbances in ID populations.