The use of the systematic screening for behavior disorders in a culturally diverse school

The Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders (SSBD) is an instrument whose intended purpose is to identify elementary age students who may be at-risk for the development of behavior disorders at some point in their school careers. The effectiveness of the first stage of the SSBD process in a culturally diverse school was investigated.

Participants in the study included 33 teachers from two elementary schools in a culturally diverse school district and 99 students in grades one through four identified by their teachers. The teachers received one and one-half hours of training on the SSBD stage one procedures, which included definitions and examples of internalizing and externalizing behavior characteristics. Each teacher identified one internalizing student, one externalizing student, and one control student in their classroom. Teachers completed the Critical Events Index, the Adaptive Behavior scale and the Maladaptive Behavior scale of the SSBD on each of the students they identified. In addition, teachers completed the Behavior Assessment System for Children teacher rating scale for the same students.

Six research questions and nine hypotheses were investigated in this study. Data were analyzed using Multivariate Analysis of Variance, Follow-up Univariate Analysis of Variance, Correlational Analysis, and multiple T-tests.

Results showed that students in a culturally diverse school identified as intemalizers obtained an adaptive behavior mean score which was significantly lower than the SSBD norm (p< .001). No significant difference from the norm was found for the maladaptive behavior mean score of the students identified as intemalizers. Students identified as extemalizers in the current study obtained an adaptive behavior mean score which was significantly lower than the SSBD norm (p< .001). The same students also obtained a maladaptive behavior mean score which was significantly higher than the SSBD norm (p< .001). Students identified as controls in the current study obtained adaptive and maladaptive mean scores which were not significantly different from the SSBD norms.

The findings of the current study suggest that, since mean scores obtained by the students in a culturally diverse school were significantly different from the SSBD norms, the instrument may not have been as effective in the culturally diverse setting. Implications of the study and recommendations for further research are discussed.