Clinical Impact of Treatment
In outcome research with antisocial youth, demonstrating
clinically significant change has been more daunting and illusive
than demonstrating statistically significant improvements.
Although there is no standardized way to assess clinical significance,
one means is to evaluate the extent to which treatments
bring child behavior within the nonclinical range of functioning
(Kazdin, 1992). Normative data are available for the CBCLs
to permit delineation of a range of behavior for nonreferred
(community) samples. We evaluated the present improvements
to examine the extent to which the treatments produced clinically
important changes, as reflected on the CBCL scales.
Mean level of deviance. The primary goal of treatment was
to reduce behavioral problems and overall child dysfunction.
To reflect an overall level of dysfunction, total behavior problem
(CBCL and CBCL-TRF) scales were examined for children
who participated in the study, relative to nonreferred sam