| The development and growth of child psychosocial competencies(e.g., prosociality, compliance with caregivers, attention and affect regulation) protect against the development of psychopathology and moderate the negative impact of existingpsychosocial problem behaviors. Moreover, children who exhibit poorly developed psychosocial competencies alongside problematic behaviors are at particular risk for negative developmental cascades. Thus, assessment of psychosocial competencies, in addition to assessment of problem behaviors, can improve identification of children in need of psychosocial services, enrich treatment planning, and improve treatment progress and outcome monitoring.However, pragmatic, multidimensional, and psychometrically validated measures of child psychosocial competencies arelimited. The Psychosocial Strengths Inventory for Children and Adolescents (PSICA)is a psychometrically promising and feasible measure to address this gap, although its discriminative properties(i.e.,known-groups validity)are unknown to date. The present study therefore evaluated the sensitivity, specificity, and optimal cutoff scores of the PSICA’s scales and subscales using data on135community-based and 27 clinic-referred children ages 2–10yearsthat were case-control matched for child age and gender.Results indicated large discrepancies between clinic-referred and community-based children in their frequency of psychosocial competencies, with clinic-referred children rated as showing significantly less psychosocial competenceoverall (d = 1.89, p < .001)and caregivers of clinic-referred versus community controls reporting significantly less satisfaction with their child’s level of psychosocial competence (r = .52, p < .001). Clinic-referred children also showed significantly less
ixpsychosocial competence across all three competency domains (i.e., Compliance, Prosociality, and Attention; ηp2= .22–.35, ps< .001). The discriminative accuracy of the PSICA’s Frequency and Satisfaction scales both were excellent (Youden’s Js = .73 and .68, AUCs = .93 and .90, respectively; sensitivity [range = .78–.89],specificity [range = .84–.90]), and PSICA Frequency subscales hadvery goodto excellent discriminative accuracy (Youden’s Js [range = .64–.68],AUCs = .86–.90,sensitivity [range = .85–.89],specificity [range = .76–.79]).Such discriminative accuracy and empirically derived cutoff scores further support the PSICA as a valid, pragmatic tool to screen children for referral into services, tailor treatment planning, and measure subsequent treatment response
KeyWords: psychosocial competencies, Psychosocial Strengths Inventory for Children and Adolescents, childhood, assessment, known-groups validity |