How the Vanderbilt is scored

Vanderbilt scoring combines how frequently each behaviour is reported with performance items covering academic and social functioning. Specific symptom counts and thresholds come from the official NICHQ scoring instructions. A score summarises observations; it never establishes a diagnosis on its own.

Quick facts

Age range: The 2002 NICHQ document does not state a numeric age range. It instructs raters to judge each behaviour against what is appropriate for the child's age, and the teacher form asks for a grade level, so it is used with school-age children.
Who completes it: A parent or caregiver, and a teacher who sees the child across the school day.
Domains measured: Inattention, Hyperactivity and impulsivity, Co-occurring behaviour items, Performance and functioning items
Form types: Parent / caregiver form, Teacher form
Questions: Parent initial form: 55 items. Teacher initial form: 43 items. The follow-up scales carry the first 18 core symptom questions plus the performance questions.
Completion time: Pending primary-source verification
Source organization: National Institute for Children's Health Quality (NICHQ)

The shape of the scoring

Responses are frequency ratings, so scoring counts how many items a rater marks at the higher frequencies and then looks at whether functioning is affected.

Exact symptom counts, cut points and performance criteria are published in the NICHQ instructions. We link to that document rather than restate numbers we have not verified against it.

What scoring cannot do

It cannot weigh medical history, sleep, hearing and vision, learning differences, anxiety, or life events. A clinician does that.

Two raters can score the same child differently, and that is expected.

Instrument items and rights

This page describes the instrument and links to the official source. We do not reproduce the questionnaire on this site.

NICHQ makes the 2002 first edition available for free download and requests citation when it is referenced. That is not a grant of digital or commercial reproduction rights, and later-edition AAP material must not be reproduced without rights. Public pages describe and cite only.

In-product permission status: not established.

Primary sources

1. NICHQ Vanderbilt Assessment Scales (first edition, 2002) (opens in a new tab), National Institute for Children's Health Quality (NICHQ) (2002)
2. AAP ADHD toolkit / later-edition Vanderbilt materials, American Academy of Pediatrics

Author: Threaded Care editorial team

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