Conners 4th Edition (Conners 4®) is the highly anticipated revision of the Conners 3rd Edition (Conners 3®), the world’s leading Attention–Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) assessment.
Conners 4 provides a comprehensive assessment of symptoms and impairments associated with ADHD and common co–occurring problems and disorders in children and youth aged 6 to 18 years. Conners 4 is an inclusive and fair measure that builds on the long history and strengths of the multi–informant Conners Rating Scales. This assessment will be an invaluable part of your ADHD assessment battery with updated norms, improved workflows,
and new and improved features.
New Features
Improved Efficiency and Usability
Now fully digital, gain valuable time with customizable reports, online scoring for better data visualization, easy inventory management, a digital manual, and printable forms.
Increased Accuracy of Assessment
- Address critical concerns with Severe Conduct and Self–Harm Critical Items and a Sleep Problems Indicator
- Measure impairments related to ADHD symptoms in the school,
social, and family domains
- Evaluate new content areas and common co–occurring problems such as Emotional Dysregulation, Depressed Mood, and Anxious Thoughts
- Apply a dimensional approach to ADHD assessment with an additional DSM Symptoms Scale – Total ADHD Symptoms
- Conners 4 provides a more comprehensive picture of how a rater approaches completing the measure, using the Response Style Analysis that includes new and updated validity scales, the number of omitted items, and the average number of items completed per minute (pace)
Superior Quantification of Severity
Evaluate the severity of symptoms and level of impairment due to symptoms by comparing the child’s/adolescent’s results to an ADHD Reference Sample (children/youth already diagnosed with ADHD).
Enhanced Collaboration with Parents
Now, with an enhanced Parent Feedback Handout
(easy–to–understand explanation and summary of results), facilitate easier collaboration with parents.
Increased Fairness and Inclusivity
Increased fairness and inclusivity with gender–inclusive language, culturally sensitive items, and items and scales that show no evidence of measurement bias regarding gender, race/ethnicity, country of residence, or parental education level.
More Informed Intervention
Evaluate an individual’s relative strengths and weaknesses using Within–Profile Comparisons for more informed intervention.
Easier Administration
Take the guesswork out of your inventory management with a new way to order uses. Purchase a general Conners 4 use and apply it across any Conners 4 form while generating reports.
Components
Conners 4:
This form is the most comprehensive and is recommended for use in initial evaluations and full re–evaluations. This form includes all Conners 4 items and scales.
Conners 4–Short:
This form is useful when a rater has limited time, or when the rater will be asked to complete the Conners 4 repeatedly (e.g., monthly assessment of treatment response).
This form takes less time to complete than the full–length form but is not as comprehensive because it has fewer scales and fewer items per scale (for both Content and Impairment & Functional Outcome scales).
Conners 4–ADHD Index:
This index can be used as a screener to determine which youth are most likely to require a more comprehensive evaluation. The Conners 4–ADHD Index contains 12 items from the full–length form that best differentiate youth diagnosed with ADHD from youth in the general population.
Reports
Single Rater Report:
Provides detailed information about scores from a single administration, presented numerically, graphically, and within an interpretive summary. A youth’s scores are compared to those in one or more Normative Samples, and optionally, to an ADHD Reference Sample. Also includes a Within–Profile Comparison of the youth’s results to their own average score.
Elevations at both the scale and item level are included. Key results are provided in a one–page overview.
Multi–Rater Report:
Combines the results of up to five raters to provide an overview of the youth’s behavior from a multi–rater perspective and highlights potentially important inter–rater differences in scores. It is available for the full–length Conners 4, Conners 4–Short, and the Conners 4–ADHD Index.
Reliability, Validity, and Fairness
Reliability:
The Conners 4 Parent, Teacher, and Self–Report scale have excellent internal consistency (median omega coefficient = .94), strong test–retest reliability (median r = .89), and moderate to strong inter–rater reliability (median r = .84 for two parent raters; median r = .52 for two teacher raters).
Validity:
- Results from confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) provided evidence to support the structure of the Conners 4 scales (6–factor model for the Content Scales [CFI ≥ .940, RMSEA ≤ .051]) and 3–factor model for Parent and Self–Report and 2–factor model for Teacher for the Impairment &
Functional Outcome Scales [CFI ≥ .935; RMSEA ≤ .094]).
- Evidence to support the convergent validity of the Conners 4
was found, given the moderate to very strong correlations between the Conners 4
and established assessments measuring related constructs (median |r| across four convergent validity studies = .73.
- The Conners 4 also demonstrated a high degree of criterion–related validity, as various clinical groups had distinctly different profiles of scores. Ratings of youth with ADHD yielded higher scores than ratings of both youth from the General Population (median Cohen’s d for significant differences: Parent = 1.51, Teacher = 0.87, Self–Report = 0.77) and youth with Depression or Anxiety (median Cohen’s d for significant differences:
Parent = 0.88, Teacher = 0.49, Self–Report = 0.57). Furthermore, endorsement of Self–Harm Critical Items and the Sleep Problems Indicator Items from ADHD groups was higher than the General Population groups. Additionally, unique symptom profiles of Conners 4 scores were observed for ADHD Inattentive, ADHD Hyperactive/Impulsive, and ADHD Combined presentation groups (e.g., scores on scales related to hyperactivity and impulsivity tended to be higher in the ADHD Hyperactive/Impulsive and ADHD Combined groups than the ADHD Inattentive group).
Fairness:
There is strong evidence that the Conners 4 meets or exceeds the fairness requirements outlined in the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA, APA, & NCME, 2014). When investigating differences by gender, race/ethnicity, country of residence, and parental education levels, there was (a) no evidence of meaningful measurement invariance in the factor models, (b) no evidence of meaningful differential test functioning between groups, and (c) negligible to small differences in average test scores between groups (median |d| = .07).
