Assesses an adolescent’s view of his/her cognitive, emotional, and behavioral functions.
Steven C. Guy, Ph.D., Peter K Isquith, Ph.D., and Gerard A. Gioia, Ph.D.

• Age Range: 11-18 years
• Time: 15 minutes

The BRIEF-SR is a standardized 80-item self-report behavior rating scale that can serve as an important tool in the clinical evaluation and treatment of children and adolescents who have problems involving the executive control functions.

The BRIEF-SR was designed to complement the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function™ (BRIEF™) Parent and Teacher Forms by capturing a child or adolescent's view of his/her own purposeful, goal-directed, problem-solving behavior. The development of executive control functions varies in terms of age of onset, rate of development, level of proficiency, and pattern of skill acquisition. During adolescence (ages 11-18 years), important executive functions emerge and develop: increased reasoning, self-awareness, flexibility, organization, and self-monitoring; greater memory capacity; better behavioral regulation; and the ability to multi-task.

Understanding an adolescent's level of awareness of his/her own difficulties with self-regulation is a critical element in focused treatment and educational planning. It can help the clinician to estimate how much external support the adolescent will need and facilitate the intervention by building rapport and a collaborative working relationship with the adolescent.

The BRIEF-SR has demonstrated reliability, validity, and clinical utility as an ecologically valid assessment of executive functions across a range of conditions. It is designed to be completed by older children and adolescents with a 5th-grade or higher reading ability, including individuals with attention disorders, language disorders, traumatic brain injuries, lead exposure, learning disabilities, high-functioning autism spectrum disorders, and other developmental, neurological, psychiatric, and medical conditions.

The 80 items yield information for eight nonoverlapping clinical scales that measure different aspects of executive functioning: Inhibit, Shift (with Behavioral Shift and Cognitive Shift subscales), Emotional Control, Monitor, Working Memory, Plan/Organize, Organization of Materials, and Task Completion. The clinical scales form two broader indexes — the Behavioral Regulation Index (BRI) and the Metacognition Index (MI) — and yield an overall summary score, the Global Executive Composite (GEC). The BRIEF-SR also includes two validity scales: Inconsistency and Negativity.

The BRIEF-SR scales demonstrate appropriate reliability. Internal consistency is high for the GEC (a = .96) and moderate to high for the clinical scales (a s = .72-.96). Temporal stability is strong (r = .89) for the GEC (over a period of approximately five weeks), and there is strong inter-rater agreement for the GEC with parent ratings on the BRIEF (r = .56). Teacher ratings on the BRIEF correlated less strongly with adolescent ratings on the BRIEF-SR (GEC, r = .25), but were well within expectations.

Correlational analyses with other self-report behavior rating scales (i.e., Child Behavior Checklist/Youth Self-Report [CBCL/YSR], The Behavior Assessment System for Children Self-Report of Personality [BASC-SRP], Child Health Questionnaire [CHQ], Profile of Mood States-Short Form [POMS-SF]) provide evidence of convergent and divergent validity for the BRIEF-SR.

Examination of BRIEF-SR profiles in a variety of clinical groups provides further evidence of validity based on clinical utility. BRIEF-SR ratings for groups of adolescents with ADHD-I, ADHD-C, insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, autism spectrum disorders, and anxiety and depressive disorders showed different patterns of scale elevations for each group compared to matched control groups. Correlations between adolescent and parent ratings for the clinical groups were strong, suggesting good agreement much of the time.

The BRIEF SR Kit includes the Manual, 25 Rating Forms and 50 Scoring Summary/Profile Forms.