Behavior Assessment System for Children - Third Edition

Overview

The Behavior Assessment System for Children – Third Edition (BASC-3; Reynolds & Kamphaus, 2015) is an individually-administered, norm-referenced, comprehensive set of rating scales and forms designed to inform understanding of the behaviors and emotions of children and adolescents ages 2 years through 21 years, 11 months. Forms available in this system include Parent Rating Scales (PRS), Teacher Rating Scales (TRS), the Self-Report of Personality (SRP; 6 years through 21 years, 11 months), Student Observation System (SOS), the Structured Developmental History (SDH), and new to the BASC-3, a Parenting Relationship Questionnaire (PRQ). The TRS, PRS, and SOS measure the child’s behavior patterns in home, community, and/or school settings. The SRP can be used to assess the child’s thoughts and feelings. The SDH is useful for obtaining students’ comprehensive history and background information across social, psychological, developmental, educational, and medical domains. Three age levels are available for the TRS and PRS forms: preschool (ages 2 to 5), child (ages 6 to 11), and adolescent (ages 12 to 21). For the SPR, the interview form is used for ages 6-7; the child form for ages 8-11, and the adolescent form for ages 12-21. A College Form is also available for examinees up to age 25 years, 11 months.

Both the TRS and PRS composite scales include Adaptive Skills, Behavioral Symptoms Index, Externalizing Problems, and Internalizing Problems; a School Problems composite score is available on the TRS. Clinical Scales on the TRS and PRS include Aggression, Anxiety, Attention Problems, Atypicality, Conduct Problems, Depression, Hyperactivity, Learning Problems, Somatization, and Withdrawal. Adaptive Scales on the TRS and PRS include Activities of Daily Living, Adaptability, Functional Communication, Leadership, Social Skills, and Study Skills. Content Scales include: Anger Control, Bullying, Developmental Social Disorders, Emotional Self-Control, Executive Functioning, Negative Emotionality, and Resiliency. Several Probability, Impairment, and Executive Functioning Indexes are also available, including the Clinical Probability Index, EBD Probability Index, Autism Probability Index, ADHD Probability Index, Functional Impairment Index, Executive Functioning Indexes (Problem-Solving, Attentional Control, Behavioral Control, Emotional Control, and Overall). SRP Composites include School Problems, Internalizing Problems, Inattention/Hyperactivity, Personal Adjustment, Emotional Symptoms Index, and Functional Impairment Index. SRP Scales include (depending on age): Alcohol Abuse, Anxiety, Attention Problems, Attitude to School, Attitude to Teachers, Atypicality, Depression, Hyperactivity, Interpersonal Relations, Locus of Control, Relations with Parents, School Maladjustment, Self-Esteem, Self-Reliance, Sensation Seeking, Sense of Inadequacy, Social Stress, and Somatization. SRP Content Scales include Anger Control, Ego Strength, Mania, and Test Anxiety.

Forms can be administered in paper-and-pencil format or in the Q-global system; scoring can be completed by hand or within the Q-global system. General, combined-gender norms are preferable for most cases but the separate-gender and Clinical norms may have advantages for some cases, which is described in detail within the manual.

The aforementioned components are assessment tools, but with regard to intervention and monitoring, the BASC-3 system also has the following associated components: Behavior Intervention Guide, Behavioral and Emotional Skill Building Guide, and FLEX Monitor (for progress monitoring). Finally, a screening version, the Behavior and Emotional Screening System (BESS) is designed to quickly and efficiently assess behavioral and emotional risk and overall mental health status of children ages 3 through 18. The BESS can be used in school-based, group-wide screenings (e.g., Tier 1 tool), and it can be hand-scored or administered and scored through the Q-global system or the Review360 system. The BASC-3 is available in Spanish for both Parent and Student forms.

Autism Related Research

None found. However, previous versions of the BASC have been used within autism-related research, which may be of interest to BASC-3 users. For example, scores on the BASC-2’s Behavior Symptom Index (BSI) were significantly higher for children and adolescents with autism, with the exception of Inattention; and also significantly lower for the Adaptive Skills Composite and all its subscales, with the exception of Adaptability (Goldin, Matson, Konst, & Adams, 2014). Volker et al. (2010) found that some BASC-2 items are aligned with autism symptoms and concluded that the Developmental Social Disorders (DSD) scale was highly effective in differentiating between children with high functioning ASD and typically-developing peers. Similarly, with younger children (24-63 months), Bradstreet and colleagues (2017) found that the DSD scale on the BASC-2 Parent Rating Scale- Preschool had adequate sensitivity and specificity values when distinguishing those with ASD from those with no diagnoses but not when differentiating between those with ASD and with other diagnoses. With regard to parent-teacher concordance of BASC-2 scores for children and adolescents with ASD, parent ratings were generally more elevated than teachers’, though they were only significantly different on the Adaptive Skills Composite (Lane, Paynter, & Sharman, 2013). Similar results were found by Ellison et al. (2016), who further found that several BASC-2 subscales are consistently clinically elevated for individuals with ASD. These include Atypicality, Withdrawal, and all Adaptive Skills subscales. Moreover, Ellison et al.’s findings underscored the additive value of teacher BASC-2 scores. In a study specifically examining the Teacher Rating Scales of the BASC, Hass and colleagues (2012) found that teacher ratings discriminate between students with an educational classification of autism and their nondisabled peers, though teacher scores tended to be in the “at-risk” as opposed to the “clinically significant” range.