With school age informants, how can the scores from the earlier and later assessments be compared?

Answer: Several scales of the school-age forms are quite comparable to scales of the adult forms. However, their precise content differs to reflect age differences and to reflect our findings on the covariation among items from the different instruments. The empirically-based school-age scales that have the clearest counterparts on the adult forms are: Anxious/Depressed, Withdrawn/Depressed, Somatic Complaints, Thought Problems, Attention Problems, Aggressive Behavior, Rule-Breaking Behavior, Internalizing, Externalizing, and Total Problems. The DSM-oriented school-age scales that have the clearest counterparts on the adult forms are: Affective Problems, Anxiety Problems, Somatic Problems, and AD/H Problems. To visually compare a person’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 person’s standing relative to the person’s agemates, the user can determine whether the person has become less deviant or more deviant from the earlier assessment to the later assessment, compared to the person’s agemates at each point. However, because the number and content of items differ from the school-age to the adult scales, their raw scores are not comparable.