Development of a Child Problem-Behavior Screening Test

Huh, Yoonseok; Ahn, Dong Hyun; Choi, Joon Ho; Kang, Ji Yoon; Kim, Yun Young; Oh, Kyung Ja

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
Purpose of this study was to develop a test screening children's emotional and behavioral problem.
METHODS
Child Problem-Behavior Screening Test (CPST) is a brief behavioral screening questionnaire that can be completed by parents or teachers. The 2nd to 4th graders (N=970) of the two elementary schools in Seoul, Korea, participated in the study. Parents and teachers completed a CPST and parents completed Child Behavior Checklist-Korean version (K-CBCL). The Reliability and validity of the CPST was evaluated by comparing with K-CBCL and by performing the factor analysis, t-test and correlation analysis.
RESULTS
Internal Consistency of CPST was relatively good (Cronbach's alpha; Parent=.846, Teacher=.834). The result of factor analysis shows that the CPST has a four-factor structure, representing 'externalizing problem', 'internalizing problem', 'physical health problem' and 'cognitive problem'. In the parent's and teacher's CPST, total variance of the four factor was 37.8% and 43.8%, respectively. There were significant correlations among subscales of parent's CPST and K-CBCL. CPST effectively distinguished children with psychiatric problems from children without psychiatric problems.
CONCLUSION
The results support that the test developed in this study is efficient to identify the children's emotional and behavioral problmes. This study also proves the usefulness of the CPST as a promising screening test of child problem behavior for large epidemiological study. In the future, a study to standardize this test is necessary, and from this, the cut-off score and norms should be developed.