Establishing norms on the Japanese version of the Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory

Background The Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory (ECBI) has been considered as one of the standardized parent rating scales which is available to identify disruptive behavior problems in children in Western countries. This study aimed to firstly determine the normative and psychometric data of the Japanese-version of the ECBI, including clinical cutoff scores among the general population in Japan. Methods This study established norms for the Japanese version of the ECBI in a sample of 1992 parents of children aged 2 to 7, living in Japan. This research evaluates the validity of the reliability (i.e., evaluation of the internal consistency with the assessment of Cronbach's alpha) of the ECBI scores for the Intensity Scale and the Problem Scale. After validation, a clinical cutoff value of the ECBI scores will be calculated and proposed using the same method, setting the cutoff to above the +1SD level based on population distribution, as in the United States, the country where the ECBI was developed. Results The means of the Intensity and Problem Scale scores were 100.07 and 6.57, respectively. Cronbach's alpha for both the Intensity and the Problem scores was 0.91. At this point, we propose cutoff scores of 125 for the Intensity Scale and 14 for the Problem Scale. Conclusions Our results suggest that the Japanese version of the ECBI has a high reliability and may be useful as a tool for assessing behavior problems in children.