Conners' Teacher Rating Scale for Preschool Children: A Revised, Brief, Age-Specific Measure

Abstract

The Conners’ Teacher Rating Scale--Revised is one of the most commonly used measures of child behavior problems; however, the scale length and the appropriateness of some of the items on the scale may reduce the usefulness of the CTRS for use with preschoolers. In this study, a Graded Response Model analysis based on Item Response Theory was applied to the CTRS data from 669 preschool children. Children in this data sample ranged in age from 25 to 74 months, 44.4% were identified as African American, 45.4% Caucasian, 10.2% other. The sample was 53.7% boys and 46.3% girls. A revised version of the scale was developed specifically for use with preschool children. Five items each for the Inattention, Hyperactivity/Impulsivity, and Opposition scale were included in the revised scale. The revised scales significantly reduce the time needed for teachers to complete the measures while retaining the scales’ ability to discriminate children with different levels of behavioral problems.

Multi-method assessment of ADHD characteristics in preschool children: Relations between measures

“…Hyperactivity/Impulsivity and Inattention subscale scores were created based on the IRT analysis reported by Purpura and Lonigan (2009). Descriptive statistics for raw scores are presented in Table 1.…”

“…The CTRS-15 (Purpura & Lonigan, 2009) is a revised version of the CTRS-R (Conners, 1997) that includes five items corresponding to inattention (e.g., “short attention span”) and five items corresponding to hyperactivity/impulsivity (e.g.,“ restless, always on the go”). The Conners' rating scales have been widely used for several decades to assess the presence of problem behaviors in children and have been shown to have good sensitivity (78%) and specificity (91%) for distinguishing children with ADHD from those without the disorder (Conners, 1997).…”

The Association of Lifestyle Factors and ADHD in Children

“…Interviewers were carefully trained with periodic quality checks, and their reliability with a master rater was k > 0.70 for all disorders evaluated. Parents and teachers each completed normed standardized rating scales: Conners-III parent and teacher ratings (Conners, Sitarenios, Parker, & Epstein, 1998; Purpura & Lonigan, 2009), Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 2001), and ADHD Rating Scale (DuPaul, Power, Anastopoulos, & Reid, 1998). Parents also completed an in-house standardized checklist of health conditions which included comorbid conditions of exclusion like psychosis, cerebral palsy, mental retardation, non-correctable vision problems, closed head injury, chronic sleep apnea, narcolepsy, and any neurological disorder such as epilepsy, autism, schizophrenia, or brain tumor.…”

ADHD: Pathophysiology, Management, and Assessment Scales

“…The usefulness of Conners' rating scale and Vanderbilt ADHD Rating Scale has been established by various studies [7][8][9][10] . The Clinical Global Impression (CGI) rating is essential for providing a global rating of illness severity, improvement and response to treatment 11 .…”

“…Various studies have established the usefulness of Conners' Rating Scale, Vanderbilt ADHD Rating Scale and Clinical Global Impression (CGI) rating scale in ADHD [7][8][9][10][11] .…”