Agreement between Parents and Teachers on School Children's Emotional/Behavioral Problems

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: In assessing behavioral/emotional problems in school-aged children, the importance of multi-informant reporting has been well documented. However, in clinical settings obtaining multiple informants' opinions has proven difficult. For that reason, we researched the agreement and predictive validity of the Child Problem-Behavior Screening Questionnaire (CPSQ) in order to reveal how accurate parents' assessments reflected teachers' opinions. METHODS: We conducted the first screening for second- and third-grade children from 3 elementary schools in Seoul from 2003 to 2007 using the CPSQ. There were 1178 children included in the analysis. We then administered the Korean version of the Child Behavior Checklist (K-CBCL) as a second screening tool and subsequently, the ADHD Diagnostic System (ADS) and the Korean Educational Development Institute version of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (KEDI-WISC) was administered by a psychiatrist. We examined each item on the CPSQ and the subscale's agreement between parent and teacher as well as the predictive validity of the CPSQ in children diagnosed with emotional/behavioral problems. RESULTS: The agreement rates between parents and teachers appeared high for questions 18 (0.433), 1 (0.385), and 2 (0.325). Among the subscales, a relatively high correlation was found for externalizing problems, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and cognitive problems. For all diagnosed children, their parents revealed a higher sensitivity and lower specificity than teachers. CONCLUSION: From these results, we confirmed that the CPSQ can be useful for sorting out externalizing and cognitive problems. There is a need for further study, however, with a larger sample size.