Description

The Children’s Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale, Second Edition (CYBOCS-2) is a revised version of the original CY-BOCS, designed to measure the severity of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms in children and adolescents aged 6 to 17 years. The CYBOCS-2 consists of a semi-structured interview and a series of rating scales used by clinical psychologists and psychiatrists to assess obsessions and compulsive behaviors.

Objective

The primary objective of the CYBOCS-2 is to provide a more detailed and reliable tool for evaluating the severity of OCD symptoms in children and adolescents. It is used both for diagnosis and for monitoring symptom progression and evaluating the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions.

Analysis

The analysis of CYBOCS-2 results involves assessing the child’s or adolescent’s responses, as well as input from parents or caregivers. The scale includes two main subscales:
Obsessions: Includes 5 items rated from 0 to 4.
Compulsions: Includes 5 items rated from 0 to 4.
The scores from each subscale are combined to yield a total score ranging from 0 to 40. Each item evaluates various dimensions such as frequency, duration, intensity, interference, and distress caused by the symptoms.

Calibration

The calibration of CYBOCS-2 involves using psychometric methods to assess the scale’s reliability and validity:
Internal Consistency: Measures the degree to which the items on the scale assess the same construct.
Test-Retest Reliability: Assesses the stability of the results over time.
Convergent and Divergent Validity: Examines how well the scale correlates with other measures assessing similar or different constructs.
CYBOCS-2 has been modified and improved based on feedback from clinical psychologists and patients, in order to meet the evolving needs in the assessment of OCD in children and adolescents.

Bibliography

For a more comprehensive understanding of the CYBOCS-2, the following references are provided:
Scahill, L., Riddle, M. A., McSwiggin-Hardin, M., Ort, S. I., King, R. A., Goodman, W. K., … & Leckman, J. F. (1997). Children’s Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale: reliability and validity. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 36(6), 844–852.
Storch, E. A., Murphy, T. K., Geffken, G. R., Soto, O., Sajid, M., Allen, P., … & Goodman, W. K. (2004). Further psychometric properties of the Children’s Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 43(11), 1364–1372.
Lewin, A. B., De Nadai, A. S., Park, J., Goodman, W. K., & Murphy, T. K. (2011). Refinement of the Children’s Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 50(6), 659–667.