Thomas M. Achenbach (1940-2023) was Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology and President of the nonprofit Research Center for Children, Youth, and Families at the University of Vermont.
He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, followed by an NIMH Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Yale Child Study Center.
In 1971-72, he was a Social Science Research Council Senior Faculty Fellow at Jean Piaget's Centre d'Epistémologie Génétique in Geneva, Switzerland.
Achenbach and his colleagues have developed a family of standardized instruments for assessing people’s behavioral, emotional, social, and thought problems, competencies, adaptive functioning, and strengths.
For ages 18–59 and 60-90+, the ASEBA includes forms completed by collaterals, i.e., people who know the adult who is being assessed, such as spouses, partners, friends, family members, and therapists.
The problem items of the ASEBA forms are scored on profiles of syndromes identified via statistical analyses of assessment data from hundreds of thousands of respondents in dozens of societies.
Data from hundreds of thousands of respondents assessed by indigenous researchers in over 50 societies have been used to construct multicultural norms.
There are separate norms for females and males, different age groups, and forms completed by particular informants, such as parents, teachers, and adult collaterals.
The importance of obtaining information from multiple perspectives has been demonstrated by meta-analytic findings of substantial disparities between ratings of children’s problems by mothers, fathers, teachers, mental health workers, observers, and children themselves (Achenbach, McConaughy, & Howell, 1987).
The Achenbach et al. (1987) meta-analytic findings have had a major impact on assessment of children for clinical and research purposes, as attested by citations in over 6,000 publications and being described by De Los Reyes and Kazdin as “among the most robust findings in clinical child research”.
Meta-analyses by Achenbach, Krukowski, Dumenci, and Ivanova (2005) also found substantial disparities between collateral and self-ratings of adults.
To facilitate use of multi-informant data, ASEBA software provides systematic comparisons between ratings and scale scores obtained from multiple informants.
Moreover, the ASEBA Multicultural Family Assessment Module (MFAM) enables users to compare multi-informant data for children and their parents on syndromes that have counterparts for ages 6–18 and 18-59.
Current editions of ASEBA Forms use gender-neutral terminology and provide options for nonbinary scoring.
The Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment (ASEBA): Development, findings, theory, and applications.