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Clinical utility of the Devereux Behavior Rating Scale—School Form among culturally diverse children
Author(s) -
Goh David S.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
psychology in the schools
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.738
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1520-6807
pISSN - 0033-3085
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1520-6807(199710)34:4<301::aid-pits1>3.0.co;2-o
Subject(s) - psychology , cutoff , rating scale , multivariate analysis of variance , ethnic group , multivariate analysis , univariate , ethnically diverse , clinical psychology , multivariate statistics , population , scale (ratio) , demography , developmental psychology , medicine , statistics , physics , mathematics , quantum mechanics , sociology , anthropology
Two hundred sixty‐seven children from three ethnic samples (95 Caucasians, 95 African Americans, and 77 Hispanics) were rated by their teachers on the Devereux Behavior Rating Scale‐School Form (DSF). The data were analyzed by univariate and multivariate ANOVAs, discriminant analysis, and sensitivity and specificity analysis. Results indicate the DSF has utility in screening children for serious emotional disturbance in the present sample. The findings also suggest that the criterion‐related validity of the DSF found for the general population can be generalized to Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic children. In addition, the cutoff score of 1 SD above the mean on the DSF Total scale was found to yield the highest true positive and negative hit rates for the total and Caucasian samples. The optimum cutoff scores were slightly lower for the African American and Hispanic samples. Usefulness and limitation of the DSF as a screening instrument with school children are discussed. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.