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behavior (Appendix B). The DPICS II differs from the previous version in two major ways. First, the rules or guidelines for coding behaviors have been clarified and expanded upon based on feedback from users of the DPICS. In the manual for DPICS II, the descriptions of the categories are followed by more detailed guidelines to facilitate accurate coding and by a greater variety of examples of parent and child behaviors to illustrate the coding principles. Attempts have been made by the authors to operationalize the coding criteria to a greater degree to reduce and/or eliminate subjective judgments by the coders. For verbalizations, coding rules were often based on grammatical properties of the words used rather than on assumptions about the intended meaning of the words. For vocalizations and nonverbal behaviors, the coding rules were designed to provide sufficient observable behavioral criteria to facilitate reliable coding.
The second major change involved the addition of several behavioral categories and the removal of several other categories. Table 9 in Appendix A lists the original categories of the DPICS along with the categories that have been added in DPICS II. While the DPICS focused on behaviors that seemed most salient for assessment and treatment (i.e., frequency of the child's inappropriate behaviors, frequency of parents' praise, commands, and criticism), in the DPICS II, the categories for child and parent behaviors have been designed to be reflexive, in that the same verbal and motor behaviors are coded for both the parent and child. Although this change greatly expands the total number of categories in the system, the reflexive nature of the parent and child categories enables coders to learn one set of rules for the categories which then apply to both the parent and child behaviors.