Usefulness of the Spanish version of the ADHD-IV Rating Scale in preschool children

ADHD is an early onset and high prevalent neurodevelopmental disorder. Rating scales are useful measures to assess ADHD symptoms, being the ADHD-RS-IV the most used. Although it exists a preschool version, the original version is very similar and it is more available than the preschool version in many countries.

To analyze whether the Spanish version of the original ADHD-RS-IV scale is useful in preschool samples.

258 preschool children aged 3 to 5 years were evaluated by parents and teachers using the original ADHD-RS-IV and SDQ scales.

ANOVA between subjects (age group and sex) and within subjects (source) provided results that were very similar to those of other studies using the Spanish preschool version. Internal consistency and convergent validity were also similar to those reported by studies using the U.S. preschool version. Finally, no significant differences were detected between the means reported by Spanish study and those of this study. In both cases, the means of Spanish parents and teachers were lower than those of Americans, but with small effect sizes.

Although it is recommended to use the preschool version whenever possible, our results suggest that original version of the ADHD-RS-IV scale is perfectly useful for both researchers and clinicians with preschool samples and it could be used in countries without normative data in preschoolers but do in school-age children.