Nelson’s OCS-CBCL Subscale for the assessment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) in children and adolescent

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the usefulness of the obsessive-compulsive scale based upon the Child Behavior Checklist, OCS-CBCL (Nelson et al., 2001). We determined internal consistency, sensitivity, specificity and positive and negative predictive value to identify obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in three samples of children and adolescents (N = 26) matched for age and gender: (1) patients with OCD, (2) psychiatric patients without OCD and (3) general population. The ANOVA revealed significant differences between groups (p < 0,001) and post hoc Scheffé analysis showed significant differences between the OCD group and the other two. The sensitivity was 73.1% to 76.9%, specificity 78.8% to 86.5%, PPV78.4% to 84.4% and NPV was 76.3% to 77,3%. The results suggest the usefulness of the OCS-CBCL for the detection of child and adolescent OCD.