A reliability generalization meta-analysis of the child and adolescent perfectionism scale

Background: Perfectionism is a prevalent disposition of personality involved in the development and maintenance of a wide range of psychological disorders. The Child and Adolescent Perfectionism Scale (CAPS) is the most usually applied test to assess perfectionism in children and adolescents. This study aimed: (a) to conduct a reliability generalization meta-analysis to estimate the average reliability of the CAPS scores and to search for characteristics of the studies that may explain the variability among reliability estimates, and (b) to estimate the reliability induction rate of the CAPS. Method: An exhaustive search allowed to select 56 studies that reported alpha coefficients with the data at hand for the CAPS. Results: The average alpha coefficients were 0.87, 0.84 and 0.83, respectively for the CAPS total score and its two subscales, Socially Prescribed Perfectionism (SPP) and Self-Oriented Perfectionism (SOP). Regarding O'Connor's version, the average reliability coefficients were 0.82, 0.74 and 0.73, respectively, for SPP, SOP-Critical and SOP-Strivings. Some study characteristics (ethnicity, language, mean age and standard deviation of the scores, psychometric vs applied) showed a statistical association with the reliability coefficients of SPP and SOP. The reliability induction rate was 29.8%. Limitations: Due to the scarcity of studies, we could not examine the reliability scores of other versions of the CAPS and test-retest reliability. Conclusions: In terms of reliability, the original version of the CAPS present better results than O'Connor's version. The original version of the CAPS is a reliable instrument to be employed with general research purposes, but not for clinical practice.