Pediatric Symptom Checklist
A parent-report screen for child psychosocial dysfunction.
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via Wikipedia: Pediatric Symptom Checklist · see source
The Pediatric Symptom Checklist is a 35-question form for parents that helps spot children who might be struggling emotionally or socially. Its main job is to give pediatricians an early heads-up that a child could use a closer look. A score above the cutoff suggests further evaluation is needed, but the checklist itself is not a diagnostic tool. It includes subscales for inner distress and mood, relationships and behavior, and attention.
Besides initial screening, it can track changes in a child’s functioning over time. Michael Jellinek, MD, developed the PSC and has studied it for more than three decades with J. Michael Murphy, Ed.D., and others. Over 200 studies in the U.S. and abroad have used it, and it has been endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the state of Massachusetts, the government of Chile, and many other groups.
Quick Facts
- Purpose
- identifies children with psychosocial functioning difficulties
Facts from the source article.
Development and structure
The PSC was designed because none of the available instruments offered the optimal combination of efficiency, ease of administration, and screening accuracy. The first draft was a shortened and revised form of the Washington Symptom Checklist (WSCL), reduced from 67 to 27 questions with open-ended questions removed. Questions were revised to address five major areas: mood, play, school, friends, and family relations.
Further revision drew on symptoms of major diagnoses for children in the DSM-III, clinical impressions of pediatricians, psychologists, and child psychiatrists, and a review of items from other questionnaires. The current PSC contains 35 statements about day-to-day behavior and mood, with response options of never, sometimes, and often. The original study focused on children aged 6 to 12, but the checklist has been validated for ages 4 through 16.
Versions
Four versions exist: a full-length parent-report form (PSC), a full-length youth self-report form (Y-PSC), a shortened parent-report form (PSC-17), and a shortened youth self-report form (Y-PSC-17). The Y-PSC was adapted from the PSC by changing pronouns and verbs for adolescent self-report in school settings; its recommended cutoff score is 30, and it has the same number of items as the PSC. The PSC-17 contains 17 items and three subscales—internalizing, externalizing, and attention—designed to screen for distinct domains of psychosocial problems.
Cutoffs for the PSC-17 total score, internalizing, externalizing, and attention subscales are 15, 5, 7, and 7, respectively. A score above cutoff indicates need for further evaluation, not a diagnosis. The Y-PSC-17 was adapted from the PSC-17 for adolescent self-report but has not yet been validated.
Psychometrics
Studies have consistently found moderate to high test-retest reliability. An early study of the PSC found Pearson's r = 0.86 after one week; the original Y-PSC study found r = 0.45 after four months. Over 10 to 18 months, scores of patients who originally scored negative remained stable, while scores of those who scored positive and were referred tended to decrease.
Internal consistency has been high across forms and languages: the original PSC study found alpha = 0.86; the PSC-17 subscales yielded alphas between 0.79 and 0.89; English, Spanish, oral, and written formats together gave alpha = 0.91–0.92; Dutch, German, and Korean versions gave alphas of 0.89, 0.86, and 0.95 respectively. Concurrent validity is supported by moderate to strong correlations with other measures. The original study found r = 0.85 with psychiatric interview ratings; comparison with the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) gave kappa = 0.76; the PSC-17 total score correlated with the CBCL at r = 0.72.
More in Mental Disorders Screening and Assessment Tools
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Pediatric Symptom Checklist (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Word definitions: the , each quoted from its Wikipedia article.
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