Pediatric Symptom Checklist-17

Abstract. The Pediatric Symptom Checklist-17 (PSC-17) is a screener designed to measure children’s behavioral and emotional problems. The measurement invariance of the scale’s higher-order factor structure was investigated in the current study. Gender invariance was established through a series of tests for configural invariance (baseline model), metric invariance, scalar invariance, residual variance invariance of items, higher-order factor loadings invariance, intercepts invariance of first-order factors, disturbances invariance of first-order factors, and factor variance invariance of a higher-order factor. The latent mean difference of the higher-order factor indicates that boys exhibited more problems with a strong effect size ( d = .870). As invariance holds, the PSC-17 may be an option to identify preschool children’s behavioral and emotional problems in Response to Intervention programs in school-based settings.