36 research outputs found
Empirically based assessment and taxonomy of psychopathology: Cross-cultural applications. A review
This paper provides an overview of empirically based assessment and taxonomy, as illustrated by cross-cultural research on psychopathology. The empirically based approach uses standardized assessment procedures to score behavioral and emotional problems from which syndromes are derived by multivariate analyses. Items and syndromes are scored quantitatively to reflect the degree to which individuals manifest them, as reported by particular informants. Although the approach to assessing problems and to constructing taxonomic groupings differs from the ICD/DSM approach, there are no inherent contradictions between either their models for disorders nor the criterial features used to define disorders. Cross-cultural comparisons have yielded relatively small differences in problem rates and syndrome structure, plus considerable similarity in associations of problems with sex and SES, as well as similar correlations between reports by different types of informants. Research on variations in problems in relation to culture, sex, age, SES, and type of informant can contribute to improving both the ICD/DSM and empirically based approaches and to a more effective synthesis between them
Problems reported by parents of children in multiple cultures: the Child Behavior Checklist syndrome constructs
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to compare syndromes of
parent-reported problems for children in 12 cultures. METHOD: Child
Behavior Checklists were analyzed for 13,697 children and adolescents,
ages 6 through 17 years, from general population samples in Australia,
Belgium, China, Germany, Greece, Israel, Jamaica, the Netherlands, Puerto
Rico, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States. RESULTS: Comparisons of
nine cultures for subjects ages 6 through 17 gave medium effect sizes for
cross-cultural variations in withdrawn and social problems and small
effect sizes for somatic complaints, anxious/depressed, thought problems,
attention problems, delinquent behavior, and aggressive behavior. Scores
of Puerto Rican subjects were the highest, whereas Swedish subjects had
the lowest scores on almost all syndromes. With great cross-cultural
consistency, girls obtained higher scores than boys on somatic complaints
and anxious/depressed but lower scores on attention problems, delinquent
behavior, and aggressive behavior. Although remarkably consistent across
cultures, the developmental trends differed according to syndrome.
Comparison of the 12 cultures across ages 6 through 11 supported these
results. CONCLUSIONS: Empirically based assessment in terms of Child
Behavior Checklist syndromes permits comparisons of problems reported for
children from diverse cultures