Dutch Norms for the Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory: Comparisons with other Western Countries

Abstract

The Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory (ECBI) is one of the most widely used and well-validated parent rating scales for children’s disruptive behavior. This screening instrument is a short, targetted and easy to implement inventory with good psychometric properties and is normed for different countries, among which the United States, Spain, Sweden and Norway. The ECBI has been successfully used for research and clinical purposes, in several countries including The Netherlands. To date, Dutch studies have relied on Scandinavian or US norm scores. However, this may be problematic because of cross-cultural differences in the degree to which certain behaviors are seen as problematic by parents. The main goal of this paper therefore was to obtain norm scores for The Netherlands among 6462 Dutch children aged 4 to 8 years (M age = 6.37 years; SD = 1.32; 50.6% boys). In line with previous research, we found small differences on the mean sum scores across children of different ages (intensity scale) and gender (intensity and problem scale). Therefore, Dutch norm scores were provided age- and gender specific. Our results showed that disruptive behavior of children in the most rural areas was reported as occurring less frequently and was seen as less problematic by parents compared to the disruptive behavior of children in less rural areas. Finally, we found that Dutch norm scores on the ECBI were significantly lower than US norm scores, and significantly higher on the intensity scale (but not the problem scale) than Norwegian and Swedish norm scores.

Families Who Benefit and Families Who Do Not: Integrating Person- and Variable-Centered Analyses of Parenting Intervention Responses

“…Intervention response trajectories were estimated using person-centered latent growth curve analysis, which is based on the assumption that the observed sample is actually a mixture of unobserved subgroups that can be characterized by different growth curves. 25 Using Mplus, and exploring one to at least five trajectories of change in disruptive child behavior (ECBI), we identified the best-fitting model based on two fit measures 26 : the lowest Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) to indicate the likelihood of fit, and the bootstrapped likelihood ratio test (BLRT) to test whether there is a significant improvement in fit when one more class is added to the model. In addition, model choice was based on entropy (ie, standardized index of classification accuracy based on posterior probabilities) and theoretical relevance.…”

“…Time was modeled as the number of months Identifying Family Types. First, we used baseline levels of clinical disruptive child behavior to distinguish the subclinical difficulties family type (<95 th percentile on the ECBI 26 ) from the parenting and child difficulties and child difficultiesÀonly family types (>95 th percentile on the ECBI). Second, we used baseline levels of self-reported clinical harsh and inconsistent parenting to distinguish the parenting and child difficulties family type (>1 SD above Head Start mean scores on the PPI; unpublished data, available at: http://www.incredibleyears.com/download/ research/PPI-Summary-Scores.pdf) from the child difficultiesÀonly family type (scoring below the >1 SD above Head Start mean scores).…”

Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory (ECBI): Normative data, psychometric properties, and associations with socioeconomic status in Finnish children

“…Thus, gender and age‐specific– norm scores are needed. Furthermore, there are considerable cultural differences in the rates of parent‐reported childhood behavior problems measured by the ECBI: mean scores have been significantly lower in northern Europe than in the United States, Spain, and the Netherlands (Abrahamse et al ., ; Axberg et al ., ; García‐Tornel, Calzada, Eyberg et al ., ; Reedtz et al ., ; Weeland et al ., ).…”

“…The established risk and protective factors for conduct disorder, such as the level of available parental support or the level of social welfare, as well as identifying and reporting children's behavioral problems might differ considerably even when comparing geographically and culturally proximate countries (e.g. Borg, Kaukonen, Joukamaa & Tamminen, ; Weeland et al ., ). Thus, acquiring country specific norms for questionnaires used in child psychiatry is important (e.g.…”

“…Earlier research has shown that the prevalence of conduct problems is higher among boys than girls and the prevalence of problems diminishes over time (e.g., Weeland, Aar & Overbeek, ). Thus, gender and age‐specific– norm scores are needed.…”