Invariance and convergent and discriminant validity between mothers' and fathers' ratings of oppositional defiant disorder toward adults, ADHD-HI, ADHD-IN, and academic competence factors within Brazilian, Thai, and American children.

Abstract

Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the invariance of an oppositional defiant disorder toward adults, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder-hyperactivity/impulsivity, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder-inattention, and an Academic Competence factor model between mothers' and fathers' ratings within Brazilian (n = 894), Thai (n = 2,075), and American (n = 817) children with the Child and Adolescent Disruptive Behavior Inventory (G. L. Burns, T. Taylor, & J. Rusby, 2001a, 2001b). The results showed invariance of item loadings, intercepts, and residuals, as well as factor variances, covariances, and means between mothers' and fathers' ratings within each sample. Convergent and discriminant validity was also observed for the between-parent factor correlations, thus providing additional support for the construct validity of the Child and Adolescent Disruptive Behavior Inventory. The confirmatory factor analysis invariance procedure provides a much better way to examine between-source ratings of behavior problems in children than do the simple correlation and raw discrepancy score procedures.

Equivalency for Father and Mother Ratings of the ADHD Symptoms

“…In contrast, the explanation in terms of the bias hypothesis means that there is little or no equivalency across the different respondent groups. Thus the support in the Burns et al (2008) study for equivalency in father ratings and mother ratings is more in line with the situational specificity hypothesis.…”

“…These included configural equivalency (same factor structure and the same items associated with the factors), metric equivalency (same strength of the associations of items with the factors, ascertained by equivalency in factor loadings), scalar equivalency (equivalency in item intercepts values), error variance or uniqueness equivalency (equivalency in the error variance of the items or variance of the items not attributed to the underlying construct), equivalency for construct variance (equivalency in the variability of the latent factors), equivalency for construct covariance (equivalency in the strength of the relationships of the latent factors), and equivalency for construct mean scores (equivalency in the mean for the latent factors). For the three samples (US, Brazilian and Thai) examined, the Burns et al (2008) study found support for all these forms of equivalencies for the CADBI (Burns et al 2001).…”

“…For instance, in the ARS-IV and DBRS, the categories are "never or rarely" (scored 0), "sometimes" (scored 1), "often" (scored 2), and "very often" (scored 3). In terms of construct validity, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) studies for various versions of ADHD rating scales have consistently found that a 2-factor model consisting of the IA and HI symptoms in separate factors provides good fit for the organization of both parent and teacher ratings of the ADHD symptoms (Burns et al 2008;DuPaul et al 1998;Gomez et al 1999), thereby supporting their construct validity.…”

“…To date, only the study by Burns et al (2008), cited above, has tested measurement equivalency for ADHD symptoms across mother and father ratings of children. They used a CFA approach that allowed for examination of various forms of equivalency.…”

Measurement Invariance of Oppositional Defiant Disorder Dimensions in 3-Year-Old Preschoolers

“…reports across children in different countries (Thailand, Brazil, North America, Australia, Malaysia) (Burns, et al, 2008;Burns, Desmul, Walsh, Silpakit, & Ussahawanitchakit, 2009) and across ages 9 to 16 (Sterba, et al, 2010). Measurement invariance across sex has also been demonstrated for American and Malaysian children (and boys scored higher than girls) (Burns, Walsh, Gomez, & Hafetz, 2006).…”