Clinical Assessment of Child and Adolescent Personality and ...

chapter 7 Parent and Teacher Rating Scales143may be discrepancies between theirreports and the reports of others. Theinformation used in conjunction withparent reports may vary with age. Morespecifically, parents are obviously vitallyimportant sources of information foryoung children in such areas as conductproblems, whereas the childrenthemselves would not be reliable (andthus, not valid) informants. Teachers,however, could offer useful perspectivesof the young child’s social, academic, andbehavioral functioning. For adolescents,parents may still provide valid and usefulinformation, but their knowledgeof the child’s conduct and behaviorproblems may be more limited, as thebehaviors may sometimes occur outsideof the parent’s awareness. The adolescent– provided that he or she is willingto provide such information – wouldbe the most knowledgeable informantof these behaviors, and the teacher’scontribution would also presumablydiminish.Finally, parent ratings are more likelyto attribute the child’s problems to dispositionalfactors in the child, whereas youthself-reports are more likely to indicate thefamily environment as a factor in need ofintervention (see De Los Reyes & Kazdin,2005). Thus, informants (includingparents, teachers, and children) may basetheir ratings of a child’s functioning onthe attributions that they make regardingthe genesis and maintenance of the child’sproblems.That parent ratings may be influencedby factors that are not necessarily directlytied to the child’s actual functioning doesnot render parent ratings questionable.Instead, it calls to mind the many potentialvariables to consider in understanding thechild’s presenting problems – an understandingthat is critical for case conceptualizationand subsequent recommendationsfor intervention.Evaluating Children viaTeacher RatingsAlthough teachers have traditionally beenconsidered an important source of informationabout children’s academic performance,they have not often been used inthe assessment of children’s behavioraland emotional functioning. However,knowing how a child behaves in the classroomis important for several reasons.First, school is a setting in which thechild spends several hours a day. Therefore,a child’s adjustment to the schoolsetting can have a dramatic impact onhis or her overall psychological functioning.Second, the multiple demands of theschool environment (e.g., to stay seated,to follow the demands of adults, to interactwith classmates) present many challengesto the child— challenges that maynot be present in other settings. Third,the demands of the school setting changeas a child progresses through school (e.g.,demands for organization, the importanceof social acceptance). Therefore,understanding school-related problemsthat are unique to a given period can provideclues to specific problems in adaptationthat a child or adolescent mightexperience.On the basis of these considerations,there is increasing interest in assessing achild’s behavioral and emotional functioningin the school setting. Given the manyadvantages of behavior rating scales, suchas time-efficiency and objectivity, it is notsurprising that the primary assessmentinstruments for children’s school behaviorhave been teacher-completed behaviorrating scales. In addition to suggestionsfor appropriate use of rating scales in generaldiscussed previously, there are severalconsiderations for interpreting informationfrom teachers that warrant specialattention.