If the preschool forms are completed for a child and the school-age CBCL or TRF is completed when the child is older, how can the scores from the earlier and later assessments be compared?

Answer Several scales of the preschool forms are fairly comparable to scales of the school-age forms.  However, their precise content differs to reflect the age differences and to reflect our findings on the covariation among items from the different instruments.  The preschool scales that have the clearest counterparts on the school-age CBCL and TRF are:  Anxious/Depressed, Withdrawn, Somatic Problems, Attention Problems, Aggressive Behavior, Internalizing, Externalizing, and Total Problems.  To directly compare a child’s standing on the corresponding scales, the profiles scored from the different instruments can be viewed side-by-side.  Because the T scores indicate a child’s standing relative to the child’s agemates, 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.