Authors:
Alice S. Carter and Margaret J. Briggs-Gowan

Publisher:
Contact Alice S. Carter at Alice.Carter@umb.edu, Margaret J. Briggs-Gowan at Margaret.Briggs-Gowan@yale.edu, or the ITSEA project office at ITSEA@yale.edu.

Initial Material Cost:
Free; if the authors give permission, they will email you the forms and manual.

Representativeness of Norming Sample:
Not nationally representative. Age and gender stratified random sample of children born at a Connecticut hospital between July 1995 and September 1997 and who lived in the New Haven-Meridan SMSA. The sample excludes children likely to have significant developmental delays, whose parents lost custody, or who had poor command of English.

Languages:
English, French, Spanish, Hebrew, and Dutch

Type of Assessment:
Parent (or child care provider) report (self-administration) or parent assessment (structured interview)

Age Range and Administration Interval:
1 to 4 years of age

Personnel, Training, Administration, and Scoring Requirements:
The reading level is between 4th and 6th grade. Administration time is 20 to 30 minutes to complete as a questionnaire, and 35 to 45 minutes as an interview. A professional with training in standardized assessment is needed to interpret the results.

Summary
Initial Material Cost: 1 (> $100)
Reliability: 3 (majority is .65 or higher)
Validity: 3 (.5 or higher with CBCL)
Norming Sample Characteristics: 2 (normed within the past 15 years, not representative sample)
Ease of Administration and Scoring: 2 (self-administered, but scored by a trained individual)

Description: The Infant Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (ITSEA) is designed to detect social-emotional and behavior problems, and delays in the acquisition of competencies in children age 12 to 48 months old. The ITSEA relies on parents and child care providers’ observations of the child in natural environments. It can be administered as a questionnaire or a structured interview. The ITSEA measures four behavioral domains: (1) externalizing using activity/impulsivity, aggression/defiance, and peer aggression scales; (2) internalizing using depression/withdrawal, general anxiety, separation distress, and inhibition to novelty scales; (3) dysreg-ulation using sleep, negative emotionality, eating, and sensory sensitivity scales; and (4) competencies using compliance, attention, imitation/play, mastery motivation, empathy, and prosocial peer relations scales. The ITSEA also includes three indices—maladaptive, atypical behavior, and social relatedness—to identify more serious problems. The indices are comprised of behaviors that have clinical significance but are not necessarily correlated. Items are rated on a three point scale: 0 = not true/rarely, 1 = somewhat true/sometimes, and 2 = very true/ often, with a no opportunity option if the caregiver did not have the opportunity to observe the behavior. There is also a short version, the Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment, which can be used as an initial screen for the ITSEA.

Uses of Information: The ITSEA is a tool for identifying children and caregivers who may benefit from additional dialogue about children’s behavior and development to determine the presence of abnormal behaviors, psychopathology, or delayed competences. By itself, it is not sufficient to make such a determination.

Reliability: (1) Internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha): the domains and scales alphas were .87 for externalizing (.73 to .79 for the scales), .80 for internalizing (.71 to .77 for the scales), .86 for dysregulation (.63 to .84 for the scales), and .90 for competence (.59 to .82 for the scales). The majority of the scales scores exceeded .65. The alphas for the indices were .56 for mal-adaptive, .56 for social relatedness, and .45 for atypical behaviors. (2) Test-retest reliability (test completed within a 44-day interval): the ITSEA domain and scale coefficients were .82 for externalizing (.69 to .85 for the scales), .83 for internalizing (.74 to.85 for the scales), .91 for dysregula-tion (.82 to .88 for the scales), .90 for competence (.77 to .88 for the scales). (3) Inter-rater reliability: agreement between mothers and fathers were .69 for externalizing (.65 to .73 for the scales), .58 for internalizing (.43 to .64 for the scales), .79 for dysregulation (.66 to .78 for the scales), and .76 for competence (.47 to .73 for the scales).

Validity: (1) Criterion and construct validity were evaluated by comparing parent ITSEA ratings with their ratings on the Child Behavior Checklist2/3 (CBCL2/3), Colorado Child Development Inventory (CCTI), Parenting Stress Index (PSI), Mullen Scales of Early Learning, and Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales. The authors reported that the strength of the relationships between the ITSEA ratings and these other measures varied according to the similarities of the constructs. The correlations between parent reports on their 2-year olds on the ITSEA and CBCL2/3 were .57 and .71 for the internalizing and externalizing domains, respectively. The correlations between the CBCL2/3 Internalizing and Externalizing constructs and ITSEA Dysregulation scores were .52 and .49, respectively. The authors reported that the Maladaptive and Atypical behavior indices correlation with CBCL2/3 Internalizing and Externalizing scores (.15 to .42), as well as the correlations between ITSEA problem domains and PSI domains (between .21 and .45) supported the validity of the ITSEA. According to the authors, other relationships that supported the validity of the ITSEA were the correlations between ITSEA Internalizing, Externalizing, and Dysregulation problem scales and CCTI Emotionality (between .37 and .53) and Soothability domains (between -.23 and -.31-), and the ITSEA Competence scale with all CBCL2/3 domains (between -.28 and -.31), PSI scales (between -.16 and -.24), and with CCTI Soothability (.28).

Method of Scoring: Web-based scoring is available. For more information, Email: Alice.Carter@umb.edu or ITSEA@yale.edu, or call 203-764-9093. Prior to scoring, 7 reverse items and “no opportunity” responses are recoded. Then, the items in the scale are summed and divided by the total number of non-missing items for a given subject. The following scores are calculated: Domain Scores, Scale Scores, and Indices. Tables are provided to derive the T-Scores for the domains and Cut-Points for the domain, scales, and indices. Cut-points are the mean scores for the domains and scales above and below which the extreme 10 percent at either ends of the reference sample fell.

Interpretability: The manual contains tables of the reference group’s mean scores by age and sex group for comparison to the calculated mean score. The manual contains tables for converting raw scores into T-scores and the cut-points for each age group and sex grouping. Cut-points are the mean score for the domains and scales above and below which the extreme 10 percent at either ends of the reference sample fell. The interpretation of the ITSEA results should be done by a professional trained in the administration and interpretation of psychometric tests.

When following up with parents and interpreting the results, it is important to assess whether the behaviors that the parent endorsed are (1) of concern to the parent; (2) evident in multiple settings and with multiple people; (3) culturally appropriate or inappropriate; (4) atypical or deviant problems in development; (5) transient problems that are secondary responses to stress; (6) transient problems that are related to a child’s developmental phase.

Training Support: None described.

Adaptations/Special Instructions for Individuals with Disabilities: None described.

Report Preparation Support: Not described, however, the manual stresses that the ITSEA was not designed to be used or interpreted by parents or other caregivers without the help of a professional who has received training in the administration and interpretation of psychometric tests.

References:

Carter, Alice S., and Margaret J. Briggs-Gowan. Infant Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (ITSEA) Manual Version 1.1. June 13, 2001.