Estandarización del Child Behavior Checklist para preescolares de población urbana de Argentina

Mental health problems in children can affect their ability to develop emotional and cognitive resources. An early diagnosis of these problems is an excellent prevention strategy; therefore, it is necessary to have validated instruments.We proposed to standardize the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL 1½-5) in its Spanish version for parents.A methodological study was carried out on a sample of 541 preschool children from urban population of Argentina, n = 369 from the general population and n = 172 from a mental health clinical group. According to the results, the CBCL 1½-5 is appropriate to evaluate degrees of behavioral and emotional problems in early ages. The broad scales (total score, externalizing problems and internalizing problems) adequately discriminated between the clinical group and the general population group. The reliability of the instrument was corroborated by high degree of agreement between informants (parents), adequate values of internal consistency, high correlation values after 7 days (test-retest), and after 6 months (stability).The standarized CBCL 1½-5 allows an early detection of behavioral and emotional problems, improving the diagnosisof mental health problems in children.