Educators have shown reluctance to implement interventions aimed at improving racial equity in school disciplinary practice. Mixed methods were applied to assess and improve the acceptability of a new intervention designed to reduce racial disparities in school discipline. A descriptive concurrent parallel design was used to assess U.S. educators'…

Valid and reliable teacher ratings serve as the foundation for screening and assessment of youth with behavioral disorders and twin studies offer an opportunity to study those ratings. We conducted a meta-analysis of 15 empirical investigations of aggressive and rule-breaking behavior using teacher ratings in the context of a twin research design.…

We report findings of a psychometric study comparing scores from two screening tools: "Student Risk Screening Scale--Internalizing and Externalizing" (SRSS-IE, an adapted version of the Student Risk Screening Scale) and "Behavior Assessment System for Children--Second Edition, Behavioral and Emotional Screening System" (BASC-2…

A line of research has supported the incremental and construct validity of multi-informant assessment. Accordingly, multiple universal screening systems have been designed to support the collection of information from multiple informants. The purpose of the study was to expand the "Social, Academic, and Emotional Behavior Risk Screener"…

Functional behavioral assessment (FBA) and functional analyses (FA) are grounded in the applied behavior analysis principle that posits problem behavior is functionally related to the environment in which it occurs and is maintained by either providing access to reinforcing outcomes or allowing the individual to avoid or escape that which they…

Teacher perceptions of school-based behavior assessments were assessed over the course of a school year. Specifically, the utility and relevance of Direct Behavior Ratings-Single Item Scales, a hybrid direct observation method, relative to two school-based behavioral rating scales, the Social Skills Improvement System-Performance Screening Guide…

Youth strengths are as important to consider as deficits in understanding developmental outcomes and thus are an important component of psychoeducational assessment. Latino/as are understudied with regard to strength-based constructs, although cultural and socioeconomic factors may be related to differences in Latino/a parents' views of their…

The study compared effects of varying sets of instructions on teacher (N=376) and mental health professional (N=178) ratings of student problem behaviors. A statistically significant difference between teachers and mental health workers emerged, though main effects for instructions were not statistically different. Teachers were more consistent in…

Teachers rated elementary-aged students on the Critical Events Index of the Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders instrument. In 2 studies, 74 students who were identified by teachers as the highest ranked externalizers and internalizers were found to exhibit strikingly different profiles on the Critical Events Index. Behavioral descriptions…

This study analyzed 182 educators' beliefs about their ability to manage maladaptive classroom behaviors. A factor analysis of teacher manageability ratings demonstrated that, by changing the method used to group behaviors, the structure of a teacher checklist also changes. The most difficult behavior to manage was "lack of…

Standardized rating scales are the most often used part of the multidimensional assessment of children's behavior. However, low cross-informant correlations raise concerns about the reliability and validity of the resulting scores. This study examined whether the manner in which behavioral constructs are measured differs across informants, across…