Behavior ratings of emotionally disturbed children by teachers, parents, and school psychologists

Emotional disturbance was rated by teachers, parents, and the school psychologist for a group of 104 children diagnosed as severely emotionally disturbed. Teachers were found significantly more severe in their judgments than the school psychologist on the Behavior and Socialization scales of the Referral Checklist, but not on Communication. The teacher rating profile was also found to deviate from parallelness from the other raters with increased severity in the Behavior scale. None of the nine correlations between judges on the same scales was significant. Interpretations and possible implications are offered.