Die deutsche Adaptation der Conners Early Childhood Scales – Ein Beitrag zur klinisch-psychologischen Diagnostik im Frühkindesalter

Background: Early childhood development (e.g. motor, linguistic or intellectual development), defined as a classified, directed and long-term change in experience and behavior, has been a broad field of research in psychology for many decades. The empirical research of developmental psychopathological processes as well as the diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses in young children is still a comparatively new topic. Epidemiological studies have been available since the beginning of the turn of the century and point to a point prevalence of approximately 10% - 20% over all mental illnesses in preschool-age children. It has been shown that the common classifications according to DSM-5 and ICD-10 (with disorder-specific adaptations) can also be used for the early childhood. Issues in the classification, that necessitate adjustments, are for example the rapid intrapersonal development of the stage of life as well as the differentiation between conspicuous and development-adequate behavior. A normative comparison by means of validated measuring procedures of behavior and development for the identification of mental illness therefore appears to be useful. This dissertation presents the validation study of the Conners Early Childhood Scales, which combines both relevant areas in one procedure. Method: In the validation study of the German version of the Conners EC, a total of 720 parental judgements and 599 caregiver judgements were surveyed throughout Germany, in respect to an equal gender and age distribution. In addition, the Strengths & Difficulties Questionnaires (SDQ) and the Behavioral Assessment Sheet for Preschool Children (VBV 3- 6) were also surveyed. A total of 43 children were additionally examined with the observation sheet for pre-school children (BBK 3-6). The aim of the present study is to examine the quality criteria (objectivity, reliability, validity) of the German adaptation of the Conners EC. The collected data was tested for reliability by determining internal consistency and correlative analyses, and for validity by correlative analyses, confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses and covariance analyses. Abstract IV Result: Satisfactory objectivity of execution, evaluation and interpretation was assumed. Regarding reliability, acceptable to very good values were found across almost all scales of internal consistency. The retest reliability was in an acceptable range. When assessing validity, the postulated factor structure could be replicated with confirmatory analyses for the behavior scales of the original version. In explorative analyses, further factors were found for the parent version of the Conners EC. Within the developmental milestone scales the global factor "general development" for both versions was found in explorative analyses. The analyses of variance demonstrated an influence of age, sex, parent educational level as well as the attending in any clinical institution on parents and caregivers judgements. Discussion: Overall, the validation of the German adaptation is satisfactory. The reported characteristic values of the original version of the Conners’ EC were replicated on the basis of the surveyed sample (with minor changes). Critical aspects of the conception of the Conners’ EC, such as inaccurate information on the creation of the itempool and the structuring and verification of the factor structure, are discussed. The largest limitation of the study is the limited representativeness of the norm sample and the inaccurate coverage of the clinical subsample. Outstanding research questions with respect to the Conners’ EC include the collection of data for samples with specific clinical disorders to determine sensitivity and specificity as well as the investigation of a more comprehensive factor structure with respect to behavioral scales and the developmental milestones.