A cross cultural comparison of French and Dutch disturbed children using the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL)

Parents, mostly mothers, of French and Dutch children who had been referred to Mental Health Services, completed the CBCL to indicate the behaviour problems that their children suffered from. The 85 items which had been found in the USA to measure eight types of disturbed behaviour, called the cross-informant syndromes, were studied to see if a similar set of dimensions of disturbed behaviour would underlie the Dutch and French CBCL scores. Seven types of disturbance were found which corresponded to the equivalent cross informant syndromes, but thought problems had no similar sort of disorder amongst the Dutch and French children. It was found that only 43 items were necessary to measure these seven dimensions. It was concluded that despite differences in language, culture and the pattern of mental health services, the CBCL scores could be used to make meaningful clinical comparisons of psychiatric disturbances.