Clinicians and researchers require evidence that Checkmate Plus Symptom Inventories do what they are supposed to do; namely, obtain reliable and valid perceptions of psychiatric symptoms from parents and teachers as well as self-reports from children, adolescents, and adults. This is a tall order for developers of clinical assessment instruments and can take many years to achieve; some would even argue this is a goal that is never fully realized. Regardless, through the efforts of not only test developers but also fellow researchers who use clinical assessment instruments in their research, a picture of clinical utility and research applicability gradually emerges. For a brief history of the role Checkmate Plus played in this process, click here.

 

There are, however, other aspects of the research story that are less well appreciated. In the case of Checkmate Plus Symptom Inventories, one of the primary motivations for developing these measures was their application in furthering our understanding of psychopathology. In other words, the availability DSM-referenced rating scales would facilitate the validation of DSM-defined psychiatric syndromes by enabling the involvement of even larger numbers of researchers in this effort, many of whom needed practical, cost-effective rating scales in lieu of labor-intensive psychiatric interviews, which were too expensive and time consuming for many applications. Today, Checkmate Plus Symptom Inventories are used extensively in research studies conducted in teaching hospitals and universities throughout the world and in fields as diverse as brain imaging, genetics, taxonomy, and treatment. For an extensive bibliography of these studies, click here.

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