Behavioral Ratings of Emotionally Handicapped, Learning Disabled, and Nonreferred Children: Scale and Source Consistency

Abstract

This study examined how well two sources of information, two behavioral rating scales, and two measures differentiated between nonreferred children and emotionally handicapped or learning-disabled children in the schools. Two sources of information, parents and teachers, rated their children on two rating scales, the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and Conners Parent and Teacher Rating Scales (PRS & TRS). On the CBCL, two measures of behavior were considered (behavior problems and social competence). A second question concerned the extent to which each source, scale, and measure provided unique information about the three groups of children. Source, scale, and measure discriminability were found. That is, within each source and each scale the emotionally handicapped children reportedly had more behavior problems (and lower social competence) than the learning-disabled children, who had more behavior problems (and lower social competence) than the nonreferred children. High within-source, between-scale correlations indicated that the two scales overlapped considerably. Low between-source correlations indicated that children's reported behavior problems and social competencies were situationally specific, so information from both the home and school settings was useful. The value of both information sources and of both behavior problem and social competence ratings was illustrated through the results of predictive efficiency analyses. Correlations between scales indicated that the TRS appeared to sample a restricted range of dimensions.