Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

This study compared parents' ratings of behavioral and emotional problems on the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach, 1991;Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001) for general population samples of children ages 6 to 16 from 31 societies ( N = 55,508). Effect sizes for society ranged from .03 to .14. Effect sizes for gender were ≤ .01, with girls generally scoring higher on Internalizing problems and boys generally scoring higher on Externalizing problems. Effect sizes for age were ≤ .01 and varied across types of problems.Total Problems scores for 19 of 31 societies were within 1 SD of the overall mean of 22.5. Bisociety correlations for mean item scores averaged .74. The findings indicate that parents' reports of children's problems were similar in many ways across highly diverse societies. Nonetheless, effect sizes for society were larger than those for gender and age, indicating the need to take account of multicultural variations in parents' reports of children's problems.

In this study, the authors investigated the effects of child gender and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptom type on elementary school teachers' referral decisions. Participants ( N = 199) read a profile of a fictional child's academic record and rated the likelihood of referring the child for an evaluation.The profiles varied by the child's gender and the type of symptoms the child was exhibiting (inattention, hyperactivity, or hyperactivity plus aggression). Results indicated that teachers were more likely to refer boys than girls, regardless of symptom type, but that the largest gender difference in referrals was for children who exhibited hyperactivity without inattention or aggression. These results suggest that differences in teacher perceptions of boys' and girls' behaviors may contribute to gender differences in ADHD referrals.

Rates of placement disruption in traditional and treatment foster care are reviewed. Contextual factors, individual child and caregiver characteristics, and risk factors thought to influence rates of placement disruption are explored. A model for treatment foster care is described, and data are presented on disruption rates for this program. The results indicated that the likelihood of placement disruption is two times higher during the first 6 months (17.8%) compared to the second 6 months (9.2%) of treatment.Taken together across the first and second 6 months of treatment, 23 of 90 youth (25.5%) experienced a placement disruption. Findings indicate that age and gender play a role in disruption, with older girls at the greatest risk for placement disruption. Limitations of the study, future directions,and implications for treatment are discussed.

Over the past several decades, an increasing number of youth have been incarcerated for violent offenses. Existing interventions for serious offenders target the prevention of subsequent delinquent behavior in general, rather than the prevention of violent behavior in particular. Within the context of a randomized clinical trial of 79 adolescent males involved in the juvenile justice system, we examine the ability of multidimensional treatment foster care (MTFC) to prevent subsequent violent offending relative to services-as-usual group home care (GC). Data on offending were collected every 6 months for a 2-year period following entry into the study. The method of generalized estimating equations was used to analyze the data. Results indicate that MTFC youth were significantly less likely to commit violent offenses than youth placed in services-as-usual group care. The group effect held even after control variables, including age at placement, age at first arrest, official and self-reported prior offenses, and time since baseline,were introduced into the model. Twenty-four percent of GC youth had two or more criminal referrals for violent offenses in the 2 years following baseline versus only 5% of MTFC youth. The rates of self-reported violent offending for MTFC youth were in the normative range following baseline, whereas rates for GC youth were 4 to 9 times higher. MTFC youth were also significantly less likely to report incidents of common violence, such as hitting.

This investigation examines teacher—student relationships among African American youth from low-income backgrounds ( N = 193). Students and their teachers completed measures of teacher—student relationship quality and measures pertaining to emotional, behavioral, and school-related adjustment. Results indicated that African American youth who fell above the clinical cut point on the externalizing scale of the Child Behavior Checklist ( n = 64) reported lower trust in relationships with teachers than did similarly matched students who did not have clinically significant externalizing symptomology. In addition, teachers rated students in the externalizing subgroup as lower in relational closeness and greater in relational conflict. Multiple regression analyses applied to data obtained from the behavioral risk group indicated that both student and teacher perceptions of teacher—student relationship quality were associated with student- and teacher-rated emotional, behavioral, and school-related adjustment. The strength of these associations varied as a function of data source and the specific relationship dimension investigated. Implications for future research and practice efforts aimed at building positive teacher—student relationships are discussed.

In this study, the authors examined the concurrent and predictive relationships between boys' proactive and reactive aggression and the quality of their friendships. At the beginning and the end of the school year, 149 boys ages 10 to 12 participated in a sociometric interview and completed a questionnaire on the quality of their relationship with their best friends. Teachers provided ratings of proactive and reactive aggression for the boys and for their best friends. Results indicated that boys' proactive aggression was associated with a supportive, satisfying, and low-conflict friendship at the beginning of the year but predicted an increase in conflict in stable friendship throughout the year. Furthermore, their friends' proactive aggression was related to conflict in and dissatisfaction with the friendship. In contrast, boys' reactive aggression was negatively associated with friendship quality at the beginning of the year but predicted a decrease in conflict in stable friendship over the year. These results suggest that although proactive aggression plays a functional role in the formation of friendship, it is also associated with a deterioration in relationship quality over time. The implications of these results for developmental research and intervention for students with emotional and behavioral disorders are discussed.

Sixty-four third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade teachers read vignettes describing boys and girls with (1) externalizing and internalizing disorders and (2) externalizing and internalizing problems of less severity. Teachers rated whether the child described in each vignette needed to be referred for mental health treatment and indicated whether they had referred a similar child for treatment. Teachers' ratings of need for referral did not differ for boys and girls, and there was no gender effect on the teachers' reported referral experience. However, teachers reported having referred more children with externalizing problems than with internalizing problems for treatment, even though they did not rate externalizing problems as needing referral more than internalizing problems. Such discrepancies are discussed in terms of the different effect of internalizing and externalizing problems on the classroom environment.

The relationship between substance use, mental health disorders, and delinquency among youth is well documented. What has received far less attention from researchers is the relationship between these issues among truant youth, in spite of studies that document truants are a population at risk for negative outcomes. This study bridges this gap by (a) examining psychosocial functioning and delinquency among truants and (b) assessing the efficacy of a brief intervention (BI) in reducing delinquent behavior over time. To meet these objectives, data were collected from 183 truant youth enrolled in an ongoing National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)–funded BI project. Informed by a developmental damage perspective, a structural equation model was formulated and estimated. Interim results provide overall support for the model and suggest that the BI may be a promising, innovative intervention for truant youth. Service delivery implications and directions for future analyses are discussed.

In this study, gender differences in the referral of children to mental health services were investigated. A total of 135 first-, second-, and third-grade teachers read vignettes describing girls and boys with either externalizing or internalizing problems, and then evaluated the child described in each vignette concerning possible referral for mental health services. Results of this study identified three factors that help explain gender differences in referral. First, teachers are more likely to believe that boys need referral because boys tend to have the types of problems (externalizing) that teachers regard as being more in need of referral. Second, teachers are generally less likely to regard a child with problems as needing referral if that child is doing well academically (a pattern more common for girls). Third, teachers are less likely to believe that girls need referral because they are more optimistic that girls with problems will improve as they mature and that internalizing problems (the type girls tend to have) will improve through maturation. The implications of these findings for teacher training are discussed.

Several studies have demonstrated the importance of comparing different informants' (i.e., teachers, parents, observers) reports of children's behavior. A study comparing Jamaican and U.S. teacher reports on children ages 6 to II revealed that Jamaican teachers reported higher problem scores in their pupils than U.S. teachers. Do Jamaican children really have more problems than U.S. children, or do teachers in these two countries have different tolerance levels for certain problems? This study addressed this question by comparing observers' and teachers' reports on Jamaican and African American children. We obtained teachers' reports and conducted structured direct observations on the same group of children. Considerable disparity emerged between observers' and teachers' ratings of Jamaican versus African American pupils.The findings suggest that ethnic similarities between Jamaican pupils and their teachers and the lack of similarities between African American pupils and their teachers may affect the teachers' threshold for perceiving the problems that their pupils present.