Measure of AD/HD and Externalizing Behaviors
Conners’ Rating Scales-Revised (CRS-R)
Author: C. Keith Conners, PhD

For more information or to order the CRS-R click here

This is an instrument that uses teacher (ages 3-17), caregiver (ages 3-17), and self-report (ages 12 – 17) ratings to aid in the assessment of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder(AD/HD) and evaluate problem behavior in children and adolescents

• Measures inattention and hyperactivity through routine screening.
• Provides perspective of child’s behavior from those who interact with child on daily basis.
• Establish baseline prior to beginning intervention and monitor effectiveness of treatment over time.
• Provides valuable structured and normed information to further support conclusions, diagnoses, and treatment decisions when reports from all individuals are combined.
• Long form and short form are available for parents, teachers, and self-report.
• The long form for parents has 80 items and includes the following scales: oppositional, cognitive problems/inattention, hyperactivity, anxious/shy, perfectionism, social problems, psychosomatic, Conners’ global index, DSM-IV symptom subscales, AD/HD index.
• The short form for parents has 27 items and includes the following scales: oppositional, cognitive problems, hyperactivity, and AD/HD index.

There are three versions of the CRS-R: 1- Parent - 2 - Teacher - 3 - Adolescent Self-Report (All of these are available in short and long form).

This assessment is often used in:

• Schools
• Mental Health Clinics
• Residential Treatment Centers
• Pediatric Offices
• Juvenile Detention Facilities
• Child Protective Agencies
• Outpatient Facilities

The assessment is administered to:

• Parent form - for students ages 3 – 17
• Teacher form – for students ages 3 – 17
• Self-report form – for students ages 12 – 17 Form

The measure is administered with pencil and paper and is hand scored.

Qualifications for administration of the CRS-S:

Bachelor’s degree in a program that included course work principles in measurement and in the administration and interpretation of tests.

Cost:

• $425 per complete kit including manual - this includes:
  • 25 feedback forms for each of the Parent long forma, Parent short form, Teacher long form, Teacher short form, Self report long form, Self-report short form, Parent AD/HD DSM-IV scales, Teacher AD/HD DSM-IV scales, Self-report AD/HD DSM-IV scales, 25 Global Index-Teacher Forms, 25 Global Index-Parent Forms, 15 CRS-R Treatment Progress Color Plot, and 100 Teacher Information Forms
• $26 per 25 Quick Score forms (specify test and version);
• $22 per feedback forms (specify test and version)
• $46 per technical manual
• $40 per user's manual
• $45 per Windows preview version including 3 administrations/interpretive reports, and user’s manual
• $10 per computer interpretive report
• $4 per computer profile report

Psychometric Properties

Based on a sample of 3,000 + children ages 3 to 17 representative of males and females and minorities.

Norms for the Parent rating scales tend to over represent Caucasian families and under represent African American families.

Norms for teacher scales are racially proportional

Norms for the adolescent scales are over representative of African American families.

Has face validity. According to Hess (2004), the CRS-R has face validity meaning that this measure appears to measure what it is supposed to measure. The items in this measure appear to be a good translation of the construct.

Reliability is stable for scores when to assessing the individual at a given time and the changes that might occur in an individual over time.

There is very little information in the manual regarding concurrent validity and predictive with other assessments. There is one reference to a study with the Children’s Depression Inventory. Concurrent validity is the measure or operational definition’s ability to distinguish between groups that it is supposed to distinguish between. In this case, this measure should be able to distinguish between those diagnosed with AD/HD and those diagnosed with Bipolar disorder. Predictive validity is the measurement’s ability to theoretically predict something that it should theoretically be able to predict.

There is high internal consistency among the items, which is a measurement of how well the items reflect the same construct and yield the same results.

No interrater reliability coefficients are reported. This means that there are no statistics on the consistency of raters observations on these scales. This poses a serious omission for the psychometric properties.

More information can be obtained from http://www.pearsonassessments.com/tests/crs-r.htm
Conners’ Rating Scales Revised. (n.d.). In The fourteenth mental measurements yearbook.
Retrieved September 16, 2008, from EBSCOHost Mental Measurements Yearbook database.