THE PSYCHOMETRIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PRESCHOOL BEHAVIOR QUESTIONNAIRE IN PRESCHOOLERS WITH DEVELOPMENTAL HANDICAPS

Parents and teachers rated 34 preschoolers with developmental handicap s on the Preschool Behavior Questionnaire (PBQ) (Behar and Stringfield , 1974a); student assistants rated 11 children. Approximately four wee ks later, parents and teachers rerated the children. Shortly after the first rating, 14 of the older subjects were assessed by direct observ ations for classroom behavior and were tested on a Continuous Performa nce Task (CPT) and the Marble Dropping Task (Zigler, 1961). Interrater agreement was generally modest to moderately high for the disruptive subscales of the PBQ (Hostile-Aggressive and Hyperactive-Distractible) , whereas agreement was usually unsatisfactory for the Anxious-Fearful subscale. Test-retest reliability was high for ratings by both parent s and teachers. Data from the direct observations and from the CPT and Marble Dropping tasks failed to validate the parent ratings, whereas they provided moderate support for the validity of teacher ratings on the disruptive subscales. We concluded that parent ratings on the PBQ do have some utility but that extreme scores derived from parent ratin gs should be interpreted with caution. Reliability appears to be adequ ate to good on the disruptive behavior subscales for teacher ratings, and existing relationships with other measures support the validity of the subscales assessing disruptive behavior. The PBQ appears to be us eful for assessing preschoolers with developmental handicaps, although our data suggest limitations as well.