Past Issues

Objective:The Conners’ Rating Scales (CRS) have been widely used for screening and measuring outcomes in treating children with attention-defi cit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, the psychometric properties of the CRS have not been fully examined. This study aimed to validate the dimensionality, to transform ordinal scores into interval scores, and to examine the appropriateness of the scoring levels of the Conners’ Parent and Teacher Rating Scale-Revised Short Form (CPRS-R:S and CTRS-R:S, respectively) by using multidimensional Rasch analysis. Methods:The sample included a representative school-based sample of 2,584 grades 1 to 9 students and a clinic-based group of 555 participants aged 5 to 16 with and without ADHD consecutively recruited from a medical center in northern Taiwan. Their parents and teachers completed the Chinese versions of the CPRS-R:S and CTRS-R:S, respectively. We used multidimensional Rasch analysis to examine the psychometric properties of both scales. Results: After removing 5 poor-fi tting items, all the remaining items showed satisfactory modeldata fi t, which, subsequently, supported the unidimensionality of each of the 8 subtests and achieved interval-level measurement. Also, the scoring levels of the 8 subtests in the CPRS-R:S and CTRS-R:S were fairly appropriate. Conclusion: The CPRS-R:S and CTRS-R:S with the 5 misfi t items removed are both valid and reliable tools in assessing symptoms of ADHD. Moreover, the transformation of raw scores into interval scores improves the precision of comparison between assessments.