The child PTSD Symptom Scale: a preliminary examination of its psychometric properties.

Reports on the development and preliminary validation of the Child PTSD Symptom Scale (CPSS) for children and adolescents. The CPSS is a new instrument that was developed to assess the severity of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in children exposed to trauma. The CPSS was administered to 75 school-age children approximately 2 years after the 1994 Northridge, California, earthquake. The psychometric properties of the CPSS show high internal consistency and test-retest reliability for both the total score and the three subscales. Convergent validity with the Child Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Reaction Index (CPTSD-RI) was established. As expected, the correlations of the CPSS with depression and anxiety measures were lower than those with the CPTSD-RI, providing some support for discriminant validity of the CPSS. These results suggest that the CPSS is a useful tool for the assessment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) severity and for the screening of PTSD diagnosis among traumatized children.

Temporal distributions of problem behavior based on scatter plot analysis.

The scatter plot is a commonly used assessment tool for identifying temporal patterns in the occurrence of behavior problems. However, the extent to which such patterns are frequently observed is unknown because little research has evaluated the general utility of the scatter plot. We conducted a large-scale analysis of within- and across-day occurrences of problem behavior by conducting continuous observations of 20 individuals living in four residential facilities. Data were recorded during 30-min intervals throughout participants' waking hours for 30 days by direct care staff and were converted into scatter plot formats. Five sets of data were excluded from further analysis due to poor interobserver agreement (below 80%). Visual analysis of the remaining 15 scatter plots indicated that none showed any reliable temporal pattern of responding. However, when the data were transformed into aggregate "control charts" based on statistical process control procedures, 12 of the 15 sets of data revealed one or more 30-min intervals during which problem behavior was more likely to occur. Results are discussed in terms of the practicality of applying statistical analyses to scatter plot data and of collecting data for the length of time needed to show statistical significance. It was concluded that detailed functional or descriptive analyses, which would reveal cause-effect or correlational relationships between behavior and specific environmental events, may be both more precise and more efficient forms of assessment.

Self-talk in youth with anxiety disorders: states of mind, content specificity, and treatment outcome.

This study investigated the relationship between childhood anxiety disorders, the valence and content of self-statements, and the impact of treatment on the internal dialogue. Participants (151 8- to 13-year-olds) included 71 youth with anxiety disorders and 80 control participants. Positive and negative self-statements and a states-of-mind (SOM) ratio were examined. Results indicated that the negative self-statements and SOM ratio (but not positive self-statements) of children with anxiety disorders significantly predicted anxiety. Results also indicated that negative (but not positive cognition) and SOM ratio predicted improvement in anxiety after treatment and mediated treatment gains. Results of analyses to explore the content specificity hypothesis were mixed. The impact of negative self-talk on children's anxious symptomatology and favorable treatment outcome is discussed.