title: The utility of elementary school TOCA-R scores in identifying later criminal court violence among adolescent females.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To evaluate the utility of a teacher-rating instrument (Teacher Observation of Classroom Adaptation-Revised [TOCA-R]) of aggressive behavior during elementary school years in identifying girls at risk of later criminal court violence.
  
  
  METHODS
  A community epidemiological sample of 845 urban public school girls was rated at six time points during elementary school regarding their level of aggressive/disruptive behavior (75% of whom were African American). Criminal violence was measured using juvenile court records. Logistic regression was used to study the strength of the association between early indicators of aggressive behavior and adolescent females' violent outcomes. An extension of the traditional receiver operating characteristics analysis was used to study the accuracy of identifying girls at risk of violence under three different screening and intervention scenarios.
  
  
  RESULTS
  For girls, teacher ratings of aggression were a strong and consistent predictor of later violence across grades 1-5 and were strongest in fifth grade. Three screening scenarios were compared to determine the optimal identification threshold. The screening scenario with a focus on minimizing false negatives yielded the highest value (kappa = 0.803).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study supports other studies indicating that early levels of aggressive behavior are strong and robust predictors of later violence among girls but are of limited utility in the early identification of girls at risk, especially when the focus is on reducing both false positives and negatives.
authors: Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
authors: Hanno
authors: H
authors: Petras
authors: Nicholas
authors: N
authors: Ialongo
authors: Sharon F
authors: SF
authors: Lambert
authors: Sandra
authors: S
authors: Barrueco
authors: Cindy M
authors: CM
authors: Schaeffer
authors: Howard
authors: H
authors: Chilcoat
authors: Sheppard
authors: S
authors: Kellam
mesh_terms: D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005178:Faculty; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007604:Juvenile Delinquency; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012372:ROC Curve; D012574:Schools; D014754:Violence / Q000523:psychology*