Children's Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale: Reliability and Validity

TLDR

The study evaluated the reliability and validity of the Children's Yale‑Brown Obsessive‑Compulsive Scale (CY‑BOCS) in children and adolescents with OCD. Sixty‑five children (ages 8–17) completed the CY‑BOCS, with interrater agreement assessed by four raters on a subsample of 24, and discriminant and convergent validity examined by comparing CY‑BOCS scores to self‑reported depression, anxiety, and OCD symptoms, yielding high internal consistency (.87). The CY‑BOCS demonstrated good to excellent interrater reliability (ICCs .84–.91), strong correlation with OCD self‑report (r = .62) versus weaker correlations with depression (.34) and anxiety (.37), and overall reliable and valid subscale and total scores, though reliability and validity were affected by age and challenges integrating parent and patient data.

Abstract

To evaluate the reliability and validity of a semistructured measure of obsessive-compulsive symptom severity in children and adolescents with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).Sixty-five children with OCD (25 girls and 40 boys, aged 8 to 17 years) were assessed with the Children's Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (CY-BOCS). Interrater agreement was assessed by four raters in a subsample (n = 24). Discriminant and convergent validity were assessed by comparing CY-BOCS scores to self-ratings of depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive symptoms.Internal consistency was high, measuring .87 for the 10 items. The intraclass correlations for the CY-BOCS Total, Obsession, and Compulsion scores were .84, .91, and .68, suggesting good to excellent interrater agreement for subscale and total scores. The CY-BOCS Total score showed a significantly higher correlation with a self-report of obsessive-compulsive symptoms (r = .62 for the Leyton survey) compared with the Children's Depression Inventory (r = .34) and the Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (r = .37) (p = .02 and .05, respectively).The CY-BOCS yields reliable and valid subscale and total scores for obsessive-compulsive symptom severity in children and adolescents with OCD. Reliability and validity appear to be influenced by age of the child and the hazards associated with integrating data from parental and patient sources.