[How well do parents and teachers' reports agree on behaviour problems in pre-school-aged children?].
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of the present study is to examine the extent of parental and teacher agreement on behaviour problems in preschool-aged children.


METHODS
Families were recruited from preschools in Braunschweig. In total, N=310 children aged three to six years were evaluated by their mothers and fathers and by their preschool teachers using the Child Behavior Checklist and the Caregiver-Teacher Report for ages 1(1)/(2) to 5.


RESULTS
The inter-parental agreement on behaviour problems was high. Parents consistently reported more problem behaviour than did preschool teachers. The median of intra-class correlation between the evaluations by the mothers with those by the fathers was 0.65, and 0.18 (0.17) for parent-teacher dyads. For the agreement between parents with respect to the borderline/clinical range a mean of kappa=0.41 was found, while there was no agreement between parents and teachers.


CONCLUSIONS
The results are integrated into the literature, and implications, particularly those for clinical assessment procedures at preschool age, are discussed.
Kuschel
Annett
A
Institut für Psychologie, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany. a.kuschel@tu-bs.de
Heinrichs
Nina
N
Bertram
Heike
H
Naumann
Sebastian
S
Hahlweg
Kurt
K
D002648:Child; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015588:Observer Variation; D010552:Personality Assessment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012931:Social Environment; D013223:Statistics as Topic