Re: Preschool Symptom Self-Report (PRESS)

[drunyan@xxxxxxxxxxx (Des Runyan)]

We have used the PRESS in the LONGSCAN studies.  We have found it to be a
problem comparing baseline scores between sites; more than observed with
the CBCL and developmental measures.  The site investigatros have become
much less enthusiastic about this measure as they consider the PRESS data
in light of the other data available on these children.  There appears to
be a significant amount of variation related to academic ability and
chronological age.  There might be other family related variables that are
important.  We have looked at the scores and chosen not to use them in our
early analyses.  Specifically, in the paper on social capital which was
published in January 1998 in "Pediatrics", we dropped the PRESS as a marker
of child function becasue of investigator concerns that this measure
appeared to correlate more with chronologic age than with other indicators
of child functioning.  We are now taking a more extensive look at the
relaibility and validity statistics for all our LONGSCAN measures.  We hope
to have a web site up in the next two months that will share some of the
reliability and validity analyses we have done with this measure and our
other measures used for the children age ages 4 and 6 years.  I will post
the web address when this is ready.

Des

Des Runyan
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC  27599
<drunyan@med.unc.edu>
<dkrunyan@mindspring.com>