ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the procedure by which children in the NINCDS Collaborative Perinatal Project (NCPP) with minimal brain dysfunction (MBD)-like symptoms were selected. Clinical diagnoses of MBD were not recorded for the NCPP children, but the 7-year psychological and neurological examinations contained items related to nearly all of the most often cited symptoms outlined by Clements. Factor scores were assigned to each child in the MBD cohort following factor analysis of 26 individual signs and symptoms. The factor analysis results were used to construct scales to measure MBD symptoms — not for a theoretical study of the underlying correlational structure in the MBD cohort. The problem of reliability of diagnoses of MBD symptoms does not appear to be a major limitation. The finding of only a slight association among the MBD symptoms was not related to problems of measurement.
