[Behavioral and emotional problems related to school nonattendance in Japanese junior high school children]

In order to assess behavioral and emotional problems related to school nonattendance in Japanese junior high school children, an epidemiological survey was performed involving mothers of about two thousand children. The questionnaire consisted of two major parts; the former concerning school nonattendance problems from April to October in 1993, and the latter was a Japanese version of the Rutter parental questionnaire. The following findings were obtained: 1) About 13% of the children were absent from school for one day or more either without any justifiable reasons or due to a psychological reason. The rate of nonattendance did not differ between boys and girls, but showed an increasing tendency with the grade level. 2) The percentage of children who missed more than 20% of scheduled days of school was 0.6% in this survey compared to 1.75% for this school district, both of which were close to the figure 0.94% in the annual report of the Japanese Ministry of Education. 3) The percentage of children who scored thirteen or more, the cutoff point of the Rutter parental questionnaire, was 3.6%, which is a lower frequency than the former reports both in and outside Japan. While items relating to neurosis showed little difference between sexes, antisocial scores were higher in boys similar to former reports. 4) Those in the school nonattendance group (n = 262) did not differ significantly from the school attendance group (n = 1381) in demographic characteristics such as sex, school grade, family size, total number of children and birth order. However, parents' educational background and job category were significantly different. In addition, Rutter scores as well as neurotic and antisocial scores were much higher in the school nonattendance group. 5) Rutter scores, especially neurotic scores showed a high correlation to the number of days of nonattendance. The school nonattendance group was divided into three groups, neurotic, antisocial and mixed. A strong relation between school nonattendance rate and the Neurotic group (n = 79), and a qualitative difference between Neurotic group and Antisocial group (n = 85) were seen. 6) High reliability of the Rutter parental questionnaire was verified through high internal consistency in two consecutive testings at two months' interval.