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Longitudinal Profiles of Girls’ Irritable, Defiant and Antagonistic Oppositional Symptoms: Evidence for Group Based Differences in Symptom Severity

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Abstract

Three subdimensions of ODD symptoms have been proposed –angry/irritable (IR), argumentative/defiant (DF) and antagonism (AN). This study tested whether longitudinal symptom trajectories could be identified by these subdimensions. Group-based trajectory analysis was used to identify developmental trajectories of IR, DF and AN symptoms. Multi-group trajectory analysis was then used to identify how subdimension trajectories were linked together over time. Data were drawn from the Pittsburgh Girls Study (PGS; N = 2450), an urban community sample of girls between the ages of five--eight at baseline. We included five waves of annual data across ages five-13 to model trajectories. Three trajectories were identified for each ODD subdimension: DF and AN were characterized by high, medium and low severity groups; IR was characterized by low, medium stable, and high increasing groups. Multi-trajectory analysis confirmed these subdimensions were best linked together based on symptom severity. We did not identify girls’ trajectory groups that were characterized predominantly by a particular subdimension of ODD symptoms. Membership in more severe symptom groups was significantly associated with worse outcomes five years later. In childhood and early adolescence girls with high levels of ODD symptoms can be identified, and these youth are characterized by a persistently elevated profile of IR, DF and AN symptoms. Further studies in clinical samples are required to examine the ICD-10 proposal that ODD with irritability is a distinct or more severe form of ODD.

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Acknowledgments

Special thanks to our dedicated research team, and to the participants for their many contributions to this study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

    Khrista Boylan & Eric Duku

  2. McMaster Children’s Hospital, 1200 Main St West, Evel Building Room 331, Hamilton, ON, L8N 3Z5, Canada

    Khrista Boylan

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Richard Rowe

  4. Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

    Irwin Waldman

  5. Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Stephanie Stepp & Alison Hipwell

  6. Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Jeffrey Burke

Authors
  1. Khrista Boylan
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  2. Richard Rowe
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  3. Eric Duku
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  4. Irwin Waldman
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  5. Stephanie Stepp
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  6. Alison Hipwell
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  7. Jeffrey Burke
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Khrista Boylan.

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Funding

The Pittsburgh Girls Study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (R01 MH056630), the FISA Foundation and the Falk Fund. The manuscript preparation was supported by an early career award to Dr. Boylan from the Hamilton Health Sciences Foundation, and a grant to Dr. Burke (MH095969) from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

Conflicts of Interest

Drs Boylan, Rowe, Duku, Waldman, Stepp, Hipwell and Burke have no conflicts of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the instutitional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in this study.

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Boylan, K., Rowe, R., Duku, E. et al. Longitudinal Profiles of Girls’ Irritable, Defiant and Antagonistic Oppositional Symptoms: Evidence for Group Based Differences in Symptom Severity. J Abnorm Child Psychol 45, 1133–1145 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-016-0231-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-016-0231-z

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