Behaviour Research and Therapy 43 (2005) 1485–1494 Concurrent validity of the DSM-IV scales Affective Problems and Anxiety Problems of the Youth Self-Report Natasja D.J. van Lang a , Robert F. Ferdinand a,Ã , Albertine J. Oldehinkel a,b,c , Johan Ormel b,c , Frank C. Verhulst a a Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam/Sophia Children’s Hospital, Dr. Molewaterplein 60/P.O. Box 2060, Rotterdam 3000 CB, The Netherlands b Department of Psychiatry and Graduate School of Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences, University of Groningen, The Netherlands c Graduate School for Experimental Psychopathology, The Netherlands Received 22 July 2004; received in revised form 5 November 2004; accepted 15 November 2004 Abstract This study investigated the concurrent validity of the DSM-IV scales Anxiety Problems and Affective Problems of the Youth Self-Report (YSR) in a community sample of Dutch young adolescents aged 10–12 years. We first examined the extent to which the YSR/DSM-IV scales reflect symptoms of DSM-IV anxiety disorders and DSM-IV Major Depressive Disorder, assessed with the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS). Second, we examined whether the association between the YSR/DSM-IV scales and the RCADS scales was stronger than the association between the empirically derived YSR narrow-band scales Anxious/Depressed and Withdrawn and the same RCADS scales. Results showed that the YSR/DSM-IV scale Affective Problems had a stronger association with symptoms of DSM-IV Major Depressive Disorder than the YSR narrow-band scales Withdrawn and Anxious/Depressed. However, the YSR/DSM-IV scale Anxiety Problems had a weaker association with symptoms of DSM-IV anxiety disorders, compared to the YSR narrow-band scale Anxious/Depressed. It was concluded that the construction of the DSM-IV scales improved the correspondence with DSM-IV Major Depressive Disorder, but not with DSM-IV anxiety disorders. r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Adolescents; Community sample; Assessment; Anxiety; Depression ARTICLE IN PRESS www.elsevier.com/locate/brat 0005-7967/$ - see front matter r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.brat.2004.11.005 Ã Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 10 4636671; fax: +31 10 4636803. E-mail address: r.f.ferdinand@erasmusmc.nl (R.F. Ferdinand).