The Diagnostic Interview for Children and Personality Inventory for Children in Studies of Children at Risk for Anxiety Disorders or Depression

The data presented in this paper suggest that there is reasonable accuracy in differentiating pathological from normal children, and that as diagnostic specificity increases, parental and parent-child concordances markedly decrease so that the definition of a case becomes more ambiguous.

Abstract

Because the results of studies of agreement between parent and child reports of child psychopathology have been mixed, the best estimate of a valid case has been unclear. Investigators have used different strategies to define a case. To explore this problem, the authors have done a controlled study of the relationships between the parent and child versions of the Diagnostic Interview for Children (DICA/DICA-P), and between the child interview (DICA) and the Personality Inventory for Children (PIC), which is a parental psychometric assessment of children's behavioral and personality characteristics. The data presented in this paper suggest that there is reasonable accuracy in differentiating pathological from normal children, and also that as diagnostic specificity increases, parental and parent-child concordances markedly decrease so that the definition of a case becomes more ambiguous. Because the results of studies of agreement between parent and child reports of child psychopathology have been mixed, the best estimate of a valid case has been unclear. Investigators have used different strategies to define a case. To explore this problem, the authors have done a controlled study of the relationships between the parent and child versions of the Diagnostic Interview for Children (DICA/DICA-P), and between the child interview (DICA) and the Personality Inventory for Children (PIC), which is a parental psychometric assessment of children's behavioral and personality characteristics. The data presented in this paper suggest that there is reasonable accuracy in differentiating pathological from normal children, and also that as diagnostic specificity increases, parental and parent-child concordances markedly decrease so that the definition of a case becomes more ambiguous.