Using the child behaviour checklist in ordinary primary schools

The study considers the application of the Child Behaviour Checklist (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1986) to the identification of children with emotional and behavioural difficulties in ordinary primary schools. Teachers provided checklist data on a sample of 320 boys and 118 girls previously referred to the schools psychological services and a further 183 boys and 39 girls who had not been referred. There was a high level of agreement between referred and non-referred student status and subsequent classification using the CBCL criteria for psychiatric disturbance. An analysis of variance was carried out to determine how far teacher expectations may contribute to CBCL scores. The results indicated that teacher differences within schools are more important than the differences which exist between teachers working in different schools. The results support the validity of the CBCL. The future application of the CBCL in ordinary schools is discussed.