[Assessment of problem situations in the family]

Goal of the study is the analysis of the German version of Barkle's Home Situations Questionnaire. The analysis is accomplished in a clinical sample of N = 76 children at the age of six to ten years with the diagnosis of a hyperkinetic disorder according to ICD-10 or an Attention deficit-/hyperactivity disorder according to DSM-III-R and in a representative sample of N = 263 children aged seven to ten years. Parents of hyperkinetic children experience many family situations with their child as very problematic which is essentially more often than parents in the representative sample. Analyses of the factorial structure of the questionnaire yielded no clear and well interpretable solutions. The instrument has a good internal consistency. The HSQ-D scores correlate significantly with other parent questionnaires for the assessment of behaviour problems, the highest correlations were found with scales for the assessment of hyperkinetic behaviour problems and social problems. In the clinical practice the instrument has proven helpful within symptom-specific assessment of children with hyperkinetic and oppositional behavior disorders and for the planning of interventions.