Screening: clinical interview
Sixty-four parents were screened initially during the recruitment phase. These parents were administered an interview—the parental account of childhood symptoms (PACS) [17]. The PACS is a structured clinical interview used to assess the core symptoms of ADHD. Parents describe the frequency and the severity of ADHD symp- toms over the previous 6 months across a range of situa- tions (e.g. in the home, with friends, in public). These
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descriptions are then rated by a trained interviewer using criteria validated according to clinical practice [3]. The PACS has been shown to have good psychometric prop- erties [17]. Inter-rater reliability of PACS in a sample of children with ADHD has been reported as satisfactory (ranging from 0.79 to 0.96) and has been found to correlate with teacher and parent rating scales of ADHD (0.68 and 0.78, respectively) [18]. The PACS demonstrates good test–retest reliability (0.83) [3] and has been validated against direct measures of symptoms [3]. Inter-rater reli- ability on ten random samples within this study demon- strated excellent inter-rater reliability (r = 0.89), while an examination of the 19 cases in the waiting list control group also demonstrated excellent test–retest reliability (r = 0.87).