This scoping review aims to identify instruments of child outcomes (e.g., emotional, and social development) assessed in evidence-based family support programs and how quality of the instruments is related to different populations (i.e., clinical, families at risk, general population). A literature review was carried out which considered instruments of children outcomes measured in evidence-based family support programs and 77 articles were selected. The most used interventions were Triple P (23 studies), Incredible Years (13), and Parent Management Training (13) conducted mainly in Europe (35) and (North-)America (25. Thirty studies were conducted with clinical populations, 22 studies with families at risk and 22 studies with general populations. The most used instruments with parents as respondents were Eyberg Child Behaviour Inventory (ECBI, Eyberg, 1999) (32) followed by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ, Goodman, 1997) (25), and the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL, Achenbach, 1991) (19). The most used instrument with children/adolescents as respondents was the Child Depression Inventory (CDI, Kovacs, 1985) (5) studies and for teachers or other professionals the Teacher Report Form (TRF, Achenbach, 1991) (9). Regarding psychometric properties, information provided by the authors was sparse. Out of all reported instruments, one third of the studies did not report any information regarding CA, one third yielded mixed findings, and one third reported good psychometric properties. Furthermore, it became evident that information regarding the CA were incomplete or missing especially in clinical and families at risk populations. Further research is needed to investigate why there is a bias in reporting psychometric properties as it might be that instruments might be less reliable in the clinical or at-risk population and thus it is not reported in the studies.
Keywords: child outcome instruments, evidence-based family support programs, sociocultural context, psychometric characteristics.