The Missouri Children's Behavior Checklist is a set of descriptions of children's behavior that may be rated by a child's parent. This checklist is based on the literature dealing with observers' reports of children's behavior in a number of different settings and consists of items that have been shown to cluster together into six relatively independent dimensions or scales (Aggression, Inhibition, Activity Level, Sleep Disturbance, Somatization, and Sociability) . The scales can be rated with reasonable reliability, and the scale scores, based on ratings by mothers, discriminate at least two groups of clinically different children. The dimensions of the Missouri Children's Behavior Checklist appear to be sufficiently independent, reliable, and discriminating to warrant further use as one approach to the quantitative evaluation of the behavior of children.

Does the information available to the clinical psychologist through his tests and other resources, as in the psychodiagnostic process, provide him with a significant amount of understanding of the patients about whom he is asked to make judgments, descriptive and diagnostic statements, and for whom he is asked to make decisions? This question implies others: (a) if significant insights into patients are possible via the information available to the psychologist, which kinds of data contribute most to an adequate level of understanding, (b) what is the relationship between the amount of data available to the clinician and the degree of insight he achieves, and (c) is it possible to identify most efficient batteries of tests and/or other data. More precisely, we see that it is not only the data themselves in which we are interested but the data as they are used by the psychologist. As Kelly (1954) has noted, the introduction of the human element into the assessment process means that the techniques of assessment (tests, data) have validity which is not independent of the assessor. The problem is, then, one of evaluation of interaction between data and user.

PROBLEMThe senior author@) has reported the use of the Shipley-Hartford scale in estimating Wechsler-Bellevue scores in two VA populations. Further, several investigators (Himelstein @), Olin and Reznikoff @)) , have evaluated the predictive accuracy of Doppelt's(') short form WAIS in psychiatric settings. Because the conversion of Shipley scores to Wechsler equivalents among incoming patients at this hospital yielded consistent over-estimates when the tables developed in the VA settings were used, and in order to compare the efficiency of the Shipley scale with that of a validated "short cut" to WAIS estimation, the two methods were evaluated on a randomly selected sample of patients admitted to the Fergus Falls State Hospital. PROCEDURES AND SUBJECTSAll patients between the ages of 15 and 65 admitted to the hospital were screened for reading ability' and general (physical, psychiatric) amenability to psychological testing.Approximately 45a/, of all patients admitted during a consecutive 15 month period met the criteria established, and were given a routine battery of psychological tests, one of which was the Shipley-Hartford scale, within the first week of hospitalization. From that group of patients a random sample of 30 was selected serially, and each patient was given a full (eleven subtest) WAIS within one week of the time at which the group tests (including the Shipley) had been completed.The patients selected ranged in age from 16 to 62 (mean 40.3, sigma 13.5), and included 19 psychotics (12 schizophrenics), 4 neurotics, and 7 of miscellaneous diagnoses. RESULTSWAIS full scale I& ranged from 67 to 130 (mean 96.1, sigma 14.5), while Shipley total scores ranged from 13 to 70 (mean 37.0, sigma 17.6). Intercorrelations between the WAIS and Shipley subscales indicated that Shipley total score (uncorrected for omitted vocabulary items) was the best predictor of WAIS full scale I&. The product moment correlation coefficient obtained between the latter two variables was .90, and the standard error of estimate in predicting WAIS I& from Shipley total score was 6.33. Employing Wechsler's scheme of intellectual classification, it was found that the estimate of WAIS I& made from Shipley total score correctly classified eighteen (60%) of the thirty subjects.Doppelt short form I& estimates were obtained, and the correlation between such estimates and actual WAIS full scale I& was found to be .960. The standard error of estimate of I& from the Doppelt formula was 4.06, while the accuracy of classification of the latter method was 67y0. These figures are in substantial agreement with those reported by others in previous evaluations of the Doppelt formula.Though estimation of WAIS full scale TQ by the Doppelt short form method tends to yield somewhat better predictions than does estimation from the ShipleyHartford, the fact that scores on the latter scale are highly related to WAIS scores, and in addition, the fact that the scale requires no professional time for administration and scoring, justifies its use as a brief me...

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