Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 25, 2026
Assessing Working Memory in Children: The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children – Working Memory (CABC-WM)
Published on: June 12, 2017
Clinical utility of the CBCL Dysregulation Profile in children with disruptive behavior
Madison Aitken1, Marco Battaglia1, Cecilia Marino1
1Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Canada; University of Toronto, Department of Psychiatry, Toronto, Canada.
Insights
The Child Behavior Checklist Dysregulation Profile (CBCL-DP) may help identify severely dysregulated children, but parent-teacher agreement is low. This tool shows promise for identifying symptomatic children with disruptive behaviors, as rated by parents.
Area of Science:
- Child psychology
- Developmental psychopathology
- Behavioral assessment
Background:
- Severely dysregulated children face significant impairments and are at high risk for mood and anxiety disorders.
- The Child Behavior Checklist Dysregulation Profile (CBCL-DP) offers a potential tool for identifying these children, enabling early intervention.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine the prevalence, gender differences, parent-teacher agreement, and concurrent validity of two definitions of the CBCL-DP.
- To assess the utility of the CBCL-DP in identifying dysregulated children referred for disruptive behavior.
Main Methods:
- The study analyzed data from 348 clinic-referred children aged 6-12 with disruptive behaviors.
- Two categorical definitions of the CBCL-DP were applied to assess prevalence and characteristics.
Main Results:
- CBCL-DP prevalence varied significantly based on definition stringency (46.8% vs. 15.2%).
- Girls were more likely to meet criteria under the stringent definition; parent-teacher agreement was low, especially with the stringent definition.
- Parents rated children with CBCL-DP as more impaired than others, irrespective of definition, while teacher ratings showed no significant difference.
Conclusions:
- The CBCL-DP, particularly as rated by parents, appears to identify a group of children with disruptive behavior who are notably symptomatic and impaired.
- Further research is needed to address limitations, including predictive validity and informant effects.
Background:
Children who are severely dysregulated experience a range of concurrent and long-term impairments and psychopathology and are particularly at-risk for mood and anxiety disorders. The Child Behavior Checklist Dysregulation Profile (CBCL-DP) may be useful in identifying children who are highly dysregulated, which could facilitate early intervention.
Methods:
We examined the prevalence, gender differences, parent-teacher agreement, and concurrent validity of two categorical definitions of the CBCL-DP in 348 children ages 6-12 who were clinic-referred for assessment and treatment because of disruptive behavior.
Results:
Rates of the CBCL-DP were 3 times higher when a less stringent versus a more stringent definition of the CBCL-DP was used (46.8% vs. 15.2%). Girls were more likely than boys to meet criteria for the CBCL-DP when the more stringent definition was used. Parent-teacher agreement was low, particularly when the more stringent definition of the CBCL-DP was used. Children with the CBCL-DP were rated by their parents, but not their teachers, as more impaired than other children, regardless of the definition of the CBCL-DP used, and even when compared to children with clinically elevated scores on other CBCL subscales.
Limitations:
Our cross-sectional data did not allow us to examine the predictive validity of the CBCL-DP, informant effects may have inflated associations between CBCL-DP and parent-rated impairment, and teacher ratings were missing for many children.
Conclusions:
Our findings support other reports that provide evidence that the CBCL-DP may identify a particularly symptomatic and impaired group of children with disruptive behavior, as rated by their parents.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
00:54What is Behavior?
01:29Drug Dosing: Infants and Children
02:24Ribosome Profiling
Applications of ribosome profiling
Ribosome profiling has many applications, including in vivo monitoring of translation inside a particular organ or tissue type and quantifying new protein synthesis levels.
The technique...
01:27Nursing Clinical Information System
A Nursing Clinical Information System (NCIS) is a specialized type of healthcare information system tailored to meet the unique needs of nursing practice. It incorporates the principles of nursing informatics to streamline information management and improve the quality of care delivery.
Critical attributes of NCIS include:
01:16Clinical Trials
There are four phases in a clinical trial. A phase one...
01:28Behaviorism
The core premise of behaviorism is its focus on observable behavior rather than internal thoughts or feelings. This approach argues that true scientific...