Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

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.

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 fields of child psychology and psychiatry have not yet established the clinical presentation in school of children and adolescents who have been diagnosed as having a depressive disorder. To address this issue, the authors used teacher ratings on scale oriented to the third, revised edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM-III-R). Based on DSM-III- R diagnoses generated from interviews—using the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School Age Children, Epidemiological Version (K-SADS-E)—of parents and children ages 6 to 18 years old ( N = 153), the authors formed three groups of children: Depressed, Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder, and Control. They then used the DSM-oriented scales of Achenbach's Teacher's Report Form and the Child Behavior Checklist, the latter completed by parents, to compare the children in each group.Teacher— parent agreement on the scales was consistent with the results from past studies.Teacher ratings distinguished among the groups almost identically to parent ratings; in particular, the Affective Problems scales significantly differentiated the Depressed group from the other two groups. Furthermore, teachers rated substantial numbers of members of the Depressed group with serious levels of both affective and anxious symptoms. Overall, teacher accuracy in identifying children with depression was 66% on the Affective Problems scales. In addition, the ratings identified two subgroups of the Depressed group: Parent-Identified Only and Teacher/Parent-Identified. Consequently, teachers appear to make clinically relevant ratings of depression in children that may enhance the diagnosis and treatment monitoring of depressive disorders in children and adolescents.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The role of television viewing in the etiology and exacerbation of aggressive behavior has been a topic of controversy for many years, and popular sentiment supports a causal link between viewing “violent” content and behaving aggressively. To better understand television's effect on children who meet public school criteria for emotional disturbance (ED), the authors conducted a 10-year program of research into their television viewing habits, comprehension of and reactivity to aggressive- and nonaggressive-content material, and responsiveness to a viewing skills curriculum. Research findings showed that children with ED viewed relatively large amounts of violent material, preferred aggressive characters, and were more likely to believe fictional content to be true. However, they were no more likely to behave aggressively in naturalistic social situations following the viewing of aggression-laden material than nonaggressive content. A curriculum designed to enhance viewing skills did increase knowledge but did not appear to have a measurable effect on overt behavior.

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.

This study tests the hypothesis that 6-year longitudinal stability of behavioral and emotional problems would be greater for children ages 6 to 7 than for those ages 4 to 5 at Time 1. Six-year outcome data for a nationally representative sample of 4- to 7-year-olds ( N = 733) were used to examine longitudinal stability of internalizing, externalizing, social, and attention problems. Six-year correlations were high for both age groups, with only 1 of 12 comparisons showing a significant age difference. About 80% of the children maintained their status as deviant versus nondeviant from Time 1 to Time 3 for all problems assessed. The best predictors of Time 3 problem scores were Time 1 and Time 2 scores on the same scale, and age group had no significant effect on regression results. These data suggest that longitudinal stability of behavioral and emotional problems is as strong for children ages 4 to 5 as for children ages 6 to 7 at Time 1.