ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Clinicians and researchers primarily measure behavioural and emotional problems of children in foster care from carer-report checklists. Yet the reliability of these reports is not adequately established. The present study examines one indicator of reliability for foster parent checklist reports: interrater agreement between foster parents and teachers. METHODS: Estimates of interrater agreement of foster parent and teacher responses on the cross-informant scales of the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL) and the Teacher Report Form (TRF) were obtained for 47 children in long-term foster care, aged 5-11 years. The estimates included calculations of agreement for continuous measures of problem behaviour, as well as for categorical determinations of clinically significant behaviour. RESULTS: Correlations of CBCL and TRF mean raw scores for the total problems (r = 0.71) and externalizing (r = 0.78) scales exceeded those described in prior studies of parent-teacher agreement, while correlation for internalizing scores (r = 0.23) was similar to that found previously. Teachers and foster parents demonstrated moderate to good agreement (kappa = 0.70-0.79) in identifying clinically significant total problems and externalizing problems, but poor agreement in identifying internalizing problems. CONCLUSIONS: Discrepancies between these and prior findings are discussed. For children in long-term foster care, foster parents or teachers may be used as informants for total problems, externalizing problems, and social-attention-thought problems. The reliability of data on internalizing symptoms is less certain.
