The analyses generally failed to support the existence of independent sub domains of dysfunction in autism spectrum conditions. Future studies of the association between genetic/neurobiologic markers and autistic symptomatology may be enhanced by approaches which consider autistic symptoms as quantitative traits, and which are informed by ongoing research on the development and phenomenology of core deficiencies in reciprocal social behavior.

This research explored the ability of parent-informant Personality Inventory for Children (PIC; Lachar, 1982) questionnaire items to form the foundation for self-report scales. An iterative rational and internal consistency approach using 585 clinical protocols constructed nine nonoverlapping clinical scales. Twenty-four complementary subscales were also constructed through scale item analysis. Acceptable estimates of scale reliability and internal consistency were established in substantial, diverse normal and clinical samples. Personality Inventory for Youth scales effectively separated normal and clinical protocols. Age and sex effects were investigated as were correlations with parent-informant PIC scales. Follow-up research includes the development of validity and adjustment screening scales, as well as the collection of diverse psychometric and clinical rating data to advance scale construct validity.

This report describes the development of a new, multidimensional teacher report inventory: the Student Behavior Survey (SBS). The SBS is intended to accompany other parent-informant and youth self-report scales constructed by the authors for use in the collection of multi-informant data for child assessments conducted in schools or clinics. The SBS has 102 items grouped into 11 scales that assess positive student attributes, such as academic skills, work habits, social skills, and the degree of parental participation in school, as well as problem behaviors, such as internalization, externalization, and poor relationships with others. The SBS was administered to large numbers of teachers of either regular education students or students receiving special education services or undergoing psychological evaluations. The psychometric characteristics of SBS items and scales are generally good. and scale scores discriminate between regular education and referred students, as well as among specific types of referred students. Overall, these results suggest that the SBS may be a useful instrument for assessing child adjustment at school.

Response sets as well as cognitive and academic deficits compromise the validity of child and adolescent self-report of emotional adjustment. Three studies using clinical and asymptomatic samples of 4th to 12th grade students detail applications of the four validity scales of the Personality Inventory for Youth (PIY), namely, (a) Validity (VAL) a scale of six highly improbable statements, (b) Inconsistency (INC) consisting of pairs of highly correlated statements, (c) Dissimulation (FB) constructed of statements that were infrequent and characteristic of intentional distortion, and (d) Defensiveness (DEF) an extension of the Lie scale of the parent-report Personality Inventory for Children. The effects of minimizing, malingering, and random response sets on the PIY validity scales are reported. The importance of such validity scales derived from child and adolescent response is discussed.

In this study we examined the comparability of the Personality Inventory for Youth (PIY; Lachar & Gruber, 1993, 1995)--Spanish version to its English counterpart among bilingual Mexican American male and female high school students (n = 120), and among incarcerated bilingual Mexican American male adolescents (n = 52). Results indicated that language (English vs. Spanish) was not associated with a significant effect on the PIY scales or subscales for male adolescents in the juvenile justice facility, but was associated with a marginal effect for regular education adolescents; more specifically, regular education students completing the PIY in Spanish reported somewhat lower levels of symptoms than those completing the English version. Also, incarcerated males obtained significantly higher scores than regular education males on all 9 clinical and 19 out of 24 clinical subscales. Overall, the results of this study suggest that both language versions of the PIY may be applied usefully in the study and treatment of a variety of problems relevant to juvenile populations. Additional findings are discussed.