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Overview
The Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment (ASEBA), created by Thomas Achenbach, is collection of questionnaires used to assess adaptive and maladaptive behavior and overall functioning in individuals. The system includes report forms for multiple informants - the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) is used for caregivers to fill out ratings of their child's behavior, the Youth Self Report Form (YSR) is used for children to rate their own behavior, and the Teacher Report Form (TRF) is used for teachers to rate their pupil's behavior. The ASEBA seeks to capture consistencies or variations in behavior across different situations and with different interaction partners.

The ASEBA is used in a variety of settings, including mental health, school, research, and forensic settings.

The ASEBA exists for multiple age groups, including preschool-aged children, school-aged children, adults, and older adults. Scores for individuals in each age group are norm-referenced,. The ASEBA has been translated in one hundred languages, and has a variety of multicultural applications. Each report form in the ASEBA System has 113 items, but there is not a one-to-one correspondence between each individual item across the different report forms.

Age Ranges
The Child Behavior Checklist exists in several versions, depending on the age of the individual reporting about their behavior:

Preschool
For the preschool version of the CBCL (CBCL/2-3), parents (and others who interact with the child in regular contexts) rate the child's behavior. Respondents rate the child's behavior on a 3-point scale (not true, somewhat or sometimes true, and very true or often true), and are instructed to rate the behavior as it occurs now or within the previous two months. This delineation differs from the instructions on other age-versions, due to the fact that rapid development and behavioral changes in the preschool age range are common.

Current version: CBCL/1.5-5) - Need to add more information

Empirically-Based Syndrome Scales
In addition to using individual items to describe potential behavioral/emotional problems, the ASEBA is designed to help screen for certain groupings of behavioral traits, or syndromes. These syndrome scales are empirically-derived, meaning that they are based on data from actual children and on statistical analyses that reflect patterns of co-occuring items/behavior. The eight syndrome scales include: When compared to the normative samples of data collected with the ASEBA, an individual's score on these scales can fall in the Clinical Range (above the 97th percentile of the normative sample) the Borderline Clinical Range (93rd - 97th percentile of the normative sample), or the Normal Range (below the 93rd percentile of the normative sample).
 * Anxious/Depressed
 * Withdrawn/Depressed
 * Somatic Complaints
 * Social Problems
 * Thought Problems
 * Attention Problems
 * Rule-Breaking Behavior
 * Aggressive Behavior

Constructing the DSM-Oriented Scales
In additional to the ASEBA Syndrome Scales, items from the ASEBA report forms judged to be consistent with DSM criteria for were developed to help mental health professionals

Depressive Problems, Anxiety Problems, Somatic Problems, Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Problems, Oppositional Defiant Problems, Conduct Problems.

Reliability
Reliability refers to whether the scores are reproducible. Unless otherwise specified, the reliability scores and values come from studies done with a United States population sample.

Validity describes the evidence that an assessment tool measures what it was supposed to measure. There are many different ways of checking validity. For screening measures such as the CAGE, diagnostic accuracy and discriminative validity are probably the most useful ways of looking at validity.