Validation of the Teacher’s Report Form for Teachers of Unaccompanied Refugee Minors

Abstract

The psychometric properties of the Dutch Teacher’s Report Form (TRF) for teachers of Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (URM) were evaluated in this study. The teachers ( n = 486) that participated received a Dutch TRF to report on the mental health of the unaccompanied minor. Hierarchical confirmative factor analysis and individual confirmatory factor analyses support the a priori structure of the Dutch TRF. However, the Thought Problems subscale could not be verified in this study, suggesting that some of the problem behavior reported by teachers of URM differs from that of parent reports or that the item constellation of the Dutch TRF is different for teachers of URM. The total Internalizing and Externalizing scales show good internal consistency. The construct and concurrent validity of the Dutch TRF were found to be acceptable. The results suggest that the Dutch TRF is a reliable and valid instrument to assess emotional and behavior problems of URM.