CAB

Clinical Assessment of Behavior

Details

Purpose

Assesses adjustment, psychosocial attributes, and problems in ages 2-18 (parent form) and 5-18 (teacher form) years

Authors

Bruce A. Bracken, PhD, and Lori K. Keith, PhD

Administration Formats

Print
Digital

Additional Details

Differentiate Between Emotional Disturbance and Social Maladjustment with Two CAB Scales and Meet IDEA Requirements

The CAB is an objective, comprehensive, and highly reliable behavior rating scale for children and adolescents that is closely aligned with current diagnostic criteria found in the DSM-IV-TR™ and IDEA.

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Features and benefits

  • Assists in the identification of children and adolescents across a wide age range who are in need of behavioral, educational, or psychiatric treatment or intervention.
  • Assesses behaviors that reflect current societal concerns and issues about youth and their behavior (e.g., bullying, aggression, executive function, gifted and talented).
  • A balanced theoretical framework of both competence-based qualities and problem-based concerns makes the CAB useful for evaluating adaptive strengths and clinical risks.
  • IDEA requires that emotional disturbance, an educationally related disorder, be differentiated from social maladjustment; two CAB scales, Emotional Disturbance and Social Maladjustment, can be used to help differentiate these conditions. The Professional Manual addresses these scales with a case example, discussion of interpretation, and, to further differentiate ED and SM, discrepancy score tables for each of the CAB forms.

Administration

Administer and score digitally on PARiConnect. You may also administer and score via paper.  Three rating forms are available:

  • CAB Teacher Rating Form (CAB-T) is used primarily in a school context and may be completed by teachers, counselors, administrators, or other knowledgeable school personnel. This form is tailored to address the adjustment difficulties and behaviors that school personnel are likely to see in students on a daily basis. 
  • CAB Parent Rating Form (CAB-P) parallels the CAB-T in content and includes typical adjustment behaviors that both parents and school personnel see on a daily basis, which allows parents and school personnel to independently rate and compare their perceptions of the same student behaviors.
  • CAB Parent Extended (CAB-PX) is used in place of the CAB-P whenever there is concern about more extreme levels of adjustment (e.g., serious behavioral disorders, significant developmental delay) or a more thorough behavioral assessment is desired. In addition to the scales included on the CAB-P and CAB-T, the CAB-PX additionally provides the Critical Behaviors scale and Adaptive Behavior scale, neither of which is included on the CAB-P or CAB-T. These scales address more extreme and more personal behaviors that are revealed or observed more often in a home setting than in a school setting (e.g., “Hears voices when no one is present,” “Hallucinates,” “Breaks curfew,” “Runs away from home,” “Dresses self,” “Has toileting accidents”).

Practical application

The CAB is useful to measure critical behaviors, societal concerns, and behaviors exhibited in medical and neuropsychological conditions.

  • Critical behaviors such as serious psychopathology and sociopathy psychotic experiences (e.g., hallucinations), substance abuse, satanic worship, and gang-related behaviors
  • Medical and neuropsychological conditions such as ADHD, LD, EF strengths and limitations, and ASD
  • Assesses behaviors that correspond to IDEA and DSM educational exceptionalities and conditions
  • Plus societal concerns affecting youth such as aggression, anger management, conduct problems, and bullying
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Photo of Clinical Assessment of Behavior ™
Age Range 2 years to 18 years
Admin Time Standard Form: 10–15 minutes; Extended Form: 30 minutes
Qualification Level B

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FAQs

What is the technical information for the CAB™?

Technical information

  • Normative data include 2,114 parent ratings and 1,689 teacher ratings.
  • Scale and cluster internal consistency necessary coefficients are .88 and higher across the three CAB forms.
  • Test-retest reliability coefficients across the three CAB forms ranged from .77 to .95.
  • Scales and clusters on all CAB forms demonstrate good evidence of validity based on test content; factor analytic studies; convergent and discriminant evidence; and concurrent validity studies across various clinical groups, including conduct/disruptive behavioral disorders, cognitive dysfunction, and ADD/ADHD.

Test structure

  • Three separate rating forms (Parent Extended [CAB-PX], Parent, and Teacher) contain corresponding items, allowing parents and teachers to contribute equally to the evaluation of target behaviors.
  • Requires an eighth-grade reading level for completion.