Behaviour Assessment System for Children, BASC - a discussion

Behavior Assessment System for Children, Parent Rating Scales (BASC- PRS) is being used by a current study investigating omics in young people with ME/CFS.

I thought it would be useful to have a closer look at it. It is a 173 item survey that parents fill out about their child.

It costs over $100 to buy, so I have only found a few clues about its contents.

The report the survey produces covers 14 aspects of the child's behaviour, grouped into 4 categories:

Externalising problems

Hyperactivity
Aggression
Conduct Problems​

Internalising problems

Anxiety
Depression
Somatization​

Behavioural symptoms Index

Attention problems
Atypicality
Withdrawal​

Adaptive skills

Adaptability
Social skills
Leadership
Functional communications
Activities of Daily Living​

 

And how do you answer those questions when your child is now ill? Perhaps the child was a joyful energetic social young person before becoming ill. And now they are slumped in their bed, refusing to go to school, often feeling upset and complaining about aches and pains and feeling exhausted even though the doctor says that there is nothing wrong with them.

Surely how you answer the questions will have much more to do with how you interpret the illness (biological or psychosomatic) than what the child's natural personality set point is?

And, does an assessment like that, with all of its bias and inaccuracy and potential to cause harm to the child and their relationship with their parents, contribute anything useful to an omics study?