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The presence of callous‐unemotional (CU) traits designates an important subgroup of antisocial youth at risk for severe, persistent, and impairing conduct problems. As a result, the fifth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual includes a specifier for youth meeting diagnostic criteria for Conduct Disorder who show elevated CU traits. The current study evaluated the DSM‐5 criteria using Item Response Theory (IRT) analyses and evaluated two methods for using a self‐report measure of CU traits to make this diagnosis.

The sample included 2257 adolescent (M age = 15.64, SD = 1.69 years) boys (53%) and girls (47%) from community and incarcerated settings in the United States and the European countries of Belgium, Germany, and Cyprus.

IRT analyses suggested that four‐ or eight‐item sets from the self‐report measure (comparable to the symptoms used by the DSM‐5 …