Mental health in Dutch children: (III). Behavioral-emotional problems reported by teachers of children aged 4-12.

Standardized teacher reports on children's behavioral-emotional problems can provide information on areas of children's functioning not readily accessible to other informants such as parents or clinicians. Once we accept the generally low agreement between different informants as inevitable, we may make use of the different types of information available from different sources. To do so we need base-line data from different informants that take account of key demographic variables such as gender, age and socio-economic status. In a previous report we provided such data for parent reported behavioral-emotional problems in children aged 4 through 16. In the present study we reported on the prevalence of a wide range of specific behavioral-emotional problems reported by teachers in a representative sample of 1,162 Dutch children aged 4 through 12; identified differences related to demographic variables and compared our data with those from other population based surveys. We used the Achenbach Teacher's Report Form (TRF) to collect our data because a comparison between different standardized teacher assessment instruments showed the TRF to be the most promising due to its solid psychometric background and its ready applicability. Our data supported the TRF's reliability and validity. For each of the 118 behavioral-emotional problems, the prevalence rates were presented graphically for both genders in two-year age groups. ANCOVAs were performed to assess the main effects and interaction of age and gender with SES as covariate for each problem item and total problem score. Of the demographic variables gender showed most numerous effects on problem items and showed the largest effect on total problem score. The main findings were: Boys obtained higher scores than girls. Many items on which boys scored higher are related to socially disapproved behavior. Boys obtained higher scores on concentration, attention and hyperactivity problems. Boys (especially the younger ones) scored higher on problems related to academic functioning. Teacher reports revealed larger gender differences than parent reports. Both parents and teachers scored boys higher on items predominantly associated with the externalizing syndrome. More boys than girls were attending education in special schools. Age showed no significant effect on total problem score, although older children were scored higher on a number of items associated with academic, somatic and social functioning and with emotions related to inner feelings.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)