PARENT AND TEACHER RATINGS IN THE ASSESSMENT AND PREDICTION OF ANTISOCIAL AND DELINQUENT BEHAVIORS

Subjects consisted of a sample of two cohorts of approximately 100 boy s each whose behaviors were rated by their parents and teachers. Crite rion variables included antisocial behavior, based on parent, child, t eacher, and interviewer reports, and delinquency, based on parent and child reports in addition to cumulative arrest data taken from juvenil e court records. The data suggest that mothers are focused on the dail y, irritating behaviors of their sons. Teachers, on the other hand, ap pear to focus on a relatively small number of items (e.g., child physi cally attacks others, associates with deviant peers), and thereby prov ide ratings that are better predictors of delinquency and arrest. When the mothers' ratings were constrained to include only items that were salient for teachers, their predictive validity coefficients approach ed the magnitude of the teacher coefficients.