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ADHD - Child

(PS1-D93) Evaluating Measurement Invariance of the Disruptive Behavior Disorders Rating Scale – Parent Report Across Ethnicity, Language, Gender, Age, and Parent Education

Friday, November 17, 2023
8:30 AM – 9:30 AM PST
Location: Regency Ballroom, Level 7
The Disruptive Behavior Disorder (DBD) Rating Scale is a screening tool used to measure inattention and behavioral problems often exhibited in children with externalizing disorders, including Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (Pelham et al., 1987). The DBD has demonstrated strong psychometric properties (e.g., good internal consistency) in children and adolescents (McQuade & Breaux, 2016; van Eck et al., 2010), and successfully differentiates clinical and non-clinical samples (Pelham et al., 2005). Recently, measurement invariance has been supported in the DBD with moderate group differences related to child and informant sex and child age (Fosco et al., 2023). However, there is a paucity of work focused on examining whether the DBD also demonstrates invariance in relation to other culturally-relevant variables (e.g., ethnicity, language, parent education), as has been done in other measures assessing ADHD (e.g., DuPaul et al., 2020).  To address this limitation, the current study aimed to examine the measurement invariance of the parent-report version of the DBD rating scale focused on the following variables: parent language, ethnicity, and educational attainment and child sex, age, and ethnicity.  The current study included 1,447 families, who were recruited from several previous intervention studies that focused on youth with ADHD and related behavioral concerns. Youth participants ranged in age from 2 to 17 (M= 9.92; SD= 2.67), with most identifying as male (73.7%) and Hispanic/Latinx (74.6%). Most of the caregivers who completed the DBD were mothers (81.6%) with the majority also identifying as Hispanic or Latinx. Caregiver education level was diverse with 3% reporting receiving less than a high school degree, 11.5% with a high school education, 17.0% with partial college, 15.1% two-year degree, 26.8% with a 4-year degree, and 26.5% with graduate training. We hypothesized that the DBD rating scale’s properties will be similar across groups (i.e., ethnicity, age, and preferred language) We conducted a series of multiple group invariance models with the following as grouping variables: parent language, ethnicity and education, and child age, sex, and ethnicity. Results provide support for strong (scalar) invariance across groups. Further analyses will include replication of the current study using the DBD – Teacher Report. The results of this study play an important role in the implementation of more culturally diverse and sensitive measures, as there is not extensive literature which addresses problems in measurement invariance in its relation to ADHD symptoms and cultural identity.  
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