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The Preschool Behaviour Checklist was designed to help nursery staff to identify and work with children who may have emotional and behavioural problems. The aim here was to consider its suitability for use as a screening instrument in primary school reception classes, which provide the first setting in which all United Kingdom children come under repeated daily scrutiny by professional staff. A partial‐replication design was used, employing 23 teachers and 516 children in a first, and 35 teachers and 350 children in a second, study. The two studies showed similar factor structures, including both internalising and externalising factors in each case. Assessed in relation to the teachers' judgments, the PBCL produced sensitivity and specificity rates of 85 percent and 91 per cent respectively. Depending on the criterion score used, 15–21 per cent of reception class schoolchildren were found to have emotional and behavioural problems. A correlation of 0.83 was obtained between PBCL and Child Behavior Checklist Teacher Report Form measures over a two‐week period. The need to compare the teachers' measures with external assessments and to evaluate how they inform practice is discussed.
James‐Roberts et al. (Tue,) studied this question.