Behavioral Assessment System for Children-Second Edition - Essay Example

Behavioral Assessment System for Children-Second Edition Behavioral Assessment System for Children-Second Edition The Behavioral Assessment System for Children-Second Edition was developed by Cecil Reynolds and Randy Kamphaus in 2004 by AGS Publishing. It is a tool that was designed to assess the behavior of children and young adults. The tool measures different behaviors and personality characteristics through different multidimensional and multi-methods that help in understanding different traits in the test group. It gives the user the differential diagnosis and educational classification in a variety of different emotional and behavioral problems and helps in coming up with the best treatment plans. The tool includes the Teacher reporting scale (TRS), the Parent Reporting Scale (PRS), a self-report of personality, Structured Developmental History (SDH), and a Student Observation System (SOS. On the PRS and TRS there are 16 measurement areas although they do not all form part of the rating scale. The 16 measures may not be administered in each rating scale but are important in the rating process and they include: adaptability, anxiety, leadership, attention problems, learning problems, functional communication, hyperactivity, social skills, aggression, activities of daily living, atypicality, somatization, withdrawal, depression, study skills and conduct disorder. These are the main aspect of the tests that are measured by the tool as it aims at giving a comprehensive test in order to understand the child better. Purpose The tool is used by clinicians while trying to understand a child and the different problems that they may face in order to come up with the treatment programs that are useful to the specific needs of the identified child. The purpose of the tool is first for treatment program planning, evaluation and intervention. The tool assesses the individual case through the different tests administered and depending on the test results a treatment program can be formulated accordingly. It is also helpful in the evaluation of a given case and understanding the different problems and dynamics of a child thereby recommending the best practices to help the child. The tool is also used as an intervention measure to help in coping with the different problems that a person may face since it is clinically sound and can be used in coming up with the best methods for dealing with the identified problems. When the tool is used with DSM-IV it is important in coming up with the differential diagnoses and assess the state of an individual based on the results. It is also an important tool when determining the educational classification and programming assistance eligibility of an individual. The tool is used to ensure that the educational classification and programming assistance that is implemented are eligible and functional within the parameters that may be helpful in the development of the learning and other abilities of an individual. Additionally, the tool is significant in ensuring that there is increased accuracy and reliability of the tests through integrating other tests and norms in the test and ensuring that the test is accurately viable to the individual case. It is also particularly important in determining the causes of problem behavior for children with disabilities and come up with better ways to intervene and construct working methods to eradicate the problem. The tests are also used in forensic evaluation since it helps in coming up with the best structures and informational designs that may help the investigators in coming up with the best forensic evidence from the information collected through this tool. The tool is viable evidence and can be cited in a court of law as the basis for conducting an investigation. Target Tests Assessment takers and their characteristics The tool is used in assessing the teachers, parents, caregivers and the examinee using different scales that are within the assessment tool. The five reports that are completed by the parents, teachers, caregivers, the examinee and the clinician are important in assessing the examinee’s behavior and giving a record of the different aspects that are tested in the reports. The report gives an account of the different tests and the results giving a full account of the scenarios that may be tested and the given diagnosis for the results. Instrument and assessment administrator One of the instruments used is the Teacher Rating scale that is separated into three forms that is the preschool in the range of 2-5years, the child that is 6-11 years and the adolescent 12-21years. The Teacher Rating Scale has roughly 100 to 139 items that are rated on a four point scale of behavioral frequency that ranges from “Never” to “Almost Always”. The other scale within the tool is the Parent Rating Scale that is also divided into the same age groups as the TRS and has a higher number of items that range between 134-160 items using a similar four point rating system. The tool also has the Self-Report of Personality (SRP) that uses three different groups that is the child in the ages of 8 to 11 years, adolescent aged between 12 to 21 years, and the college age group that has the ages between 18 to 25 years. The tool also has an oral interview-based form that is the (SRP-1) for children between the ages of 6 to 7 years. The children are taken through the process where the interviews conducted require a Yes or No response to the set questions. The tool also has a Parent Relationship Questionnaire that can be used together with other reports to gather information about a child or adolescent relationship with their parents. It’s a tool that is used in getting information from the parent by the clinician to understand the relationship that exists between the parent and the examinee. The scores that are collected from each scale are later converted into composite scores and normative data that is plotted and used to dhow behavioral patterns and profiles of the examinee. Assessment Setting Depending on the type of scale that is used in the tests the clinician may offer the test in an environment where the examinee and the different members of the assessment are most comfortable in. This can be at their school, home, or in the facility where the clinician may deem to be the best place for the test. In most cases the clinician tries to ensure that there are no interactions or influences that can deter the results since the teacher or the parent may act as a distraction and lead to untruthful information from the examinee. It is therefore essential to ensure that the examinee is separated from the people that may influence their answers to the specific questions and guarantee confidentiality in the information that is given from the tests. What is being assessed or measured There are different tools and assessment information designs that are used to measure the 16 items that have been aforementioned. The tool is important in measuring both the emotional and the learning attitude and behaviors of children and in turn ensure that there is a structured diagnosis that is derived from the assessment. The sixteen measures are used as the main parameters that the information collected needs to be structured around to ensure that there is a set of informational structure important in coming up with the specific informational setting usable in the diagnosis. Forms and number of assessment items in the test There are five different forms that are completed by the child, clinician, teacher and parents in the report. One of the forms is the Teacher Rating Scale (TRS), The Parent Rating Scale, the Self-report of personality, Parent Relationship Questionnaire and the compilation of the scores collected to make sense of the results. There are sixteen different items that can be tested through this tool and it is essential in making the proper decisions in the process. Validity and reliability issues The behavioral assessment tool discusses three different measures to establish reliability of the samples collected. One of the reliability tools is the internal consistency that analyzes the internal consistency in the .90s for the composite scales and reliabilities are generally in the range of .80s for individual scales. This is applied to all the scales that is the TRS, PRAS, and the Self-reporting scale that are all similar in their measures in the general sample and the clinical sample. The Test-retest Reliability is used to measure the reliability of a sample depending on the different age-groups that have been divided in the measure. Similar to the internal consistency principle the test reliability principle was similar to all the different scales and yielded average correlations of .80s for composite scores and between .70s and .80s for individual scores. While testing reliability there was also the inter-rater reliability analysis that was performed to only the teacher and parent reports for a significant amount of scores. There were two samples for the TRS and the PRS that were rated by 2 teachers and 2 parents respectively. Median for composite scores ranged between .53 to .65 for the individual scores and .57 to .74 for the composite score of the TRS sample. When assessing the validity of the tool as a measure against other methods it was tested for construct, convergent and discriminative validity. The TRS was compared to other related behavioral assessment tools such as the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment Caregiver-Teacher Report Form (ASEBA) and the Conners’ Teacher Rating Scale and the correlation was in the .70s and .80s to these other methods. Similarly the PRS scale was compared to other behavioral measures such as ASEBA Child Behavior Checklist for the Ages of 1to 5years and the Conners’ Parent Scale-Revised, and the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning (BRIEF) that saw a correlation of.70s and .80s when they addressed similar content. There are two articles in psychology that use the BASC tool as a measure of the ability of children in the tests in coming up with information and structures that are essential in interpreting different traits that are depicted by the children. The two articles use the different aspects highlighted in the BASC tool to come up with a good measure of comparing between different aspects of the tools in the report (Wolfe-Christensen, 2009). The articles are looking for ways to detect different behavior in children and discuss the meaning of the behavior depicted and how it influences the individual. The tool has been used as the main basis and source of information and comparison to understand the implications of the measures that are employed in assessing a child’s behavior. The tools are essential in the structure and mapping out of the different techniques and procedural aspects of the information and give a well-structured report on how behavior in children is depicted through engaging all the parties involved in the development and learning of the child. One of the journal entries uses the tool to measure autism symptoms in children using the adolescent that is the examinee, parent and teacher to understand the psychotic behavior (Mahan and Matson, 2011). One of the main strengths of the tool is that it measures different 16 different aspects of information and as a result it is important in coming up with the best diagnosis of the evident case. However, measuring that number of aspects in a single case may require a lot of information and items to come up with the best diagnosis and interpretation of the results. This may prove difficult since it may take a lot of time to collect the information from the different parties and interpret the information for diagnosis. It is therefore essential to ensure that the information collected relates to one of the concepts and can therefore be conducted conclusively rather than on different concepts and ideas that do not have a conclusive interpretation. References Mahan, S., & Matson, J. L. (2011). Children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders compared to typically developing controls on the Behavioral Assessment System for Children, Second Edition (BASC2). Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders. doi:10.1016/j.rasd.2010.02.007 Wolfe-Christensen, C., Mullins, L. L., Stinnett, T. A., Carpentier, M. Y., &Fedele, D. A. (2009). Use of the Behavioral Assessment System for Children 2nd Edition: Parent Report Scale in Pediatric Cancer Populations. Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings.doi:10.1007/s10880-009-9174-7 Read More