Brief Report: Psychometric Properties of the Brief Problem Monitor-Parent (BPM-P) 6-18 in a Sample of Children Referred to an Autism Specialty Clinic

Detection and monitoring of emotional and behavior problems is a critical part of clinical care for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), as well as a common focus of research. The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) is a well-established caregiver-report instrument that is used for screening and monitoring of emotional and behavior problems in individuals diagnosed with ASD and NDDs. However, it has over 100 items and can be time-consuming to complete. The Brief Problem Monitor Parent Report (BPM-P; Achenbach et al. 2011) includes a subset of the CBCL items and is intended for monitoring emotional and behavior problems. However, its validity has not been examined in ASD or NDD samples. Data from 302 children ages 6-18 years whose caregivers had completed the CBCL were drawn from a clinical research databank. Confirmatory factor analysis of the BPM-P three-factor structure had mixed findings. All BPM-P scales had acceptable internal consistency, and agreement between the BPM-P cutoffs and the corresponding CBCL clinical cutoffs was acceptable for the broad problem scales. The Attention scale demonstrated high sensitivity, but poor specificity. Results provide initial evidence that the BPM-P may be a useful alternative to the CBCL, producing comparable information for broad problems, while requiring much less time from caregivers. BPM-P users may want to consider the Attention scale separately due to poor specificity compared to the CBCL. These results will need to be replicated using larger samples and independent administrations of the BPM-P and the CBCL.