If preschool ASEBA forms for ages 1½-5 are completed for a child and school-age ASEBA forms are completed when the child is older, how can the scores from the earlier and later assessments be compared?

Several scales of the preschool forms are fairly comparable to scales of the school-age forms. However, their precise content differs to reflect age differences and to reflect our findings on the co-variation among items from the different instruments. The preschool scales that have clearest counterparts on the school-age forms are: Anxious/Depressed, Withdrawn, Somatic Problems, Attention Problems, Aggressive Behavior, Internalizing, Externalizing, and Total Problems.

To visually compare a child’s standing on the corresponding scales, the profiles scored from different instruments can be viewed side-by-side. Because the T scores indicate a child’s standing relative to the child’s agemate, the user can determine whether a child has become less deviant or more deviant from the earlier assessment to the later assessment, compared to the child’s agemates at each point. However, because the number and content of items differ from the preschool to the school-age scales, their raw scores are not comparable.