The Use of Teacher Ratings in a Mental Health Study: A Method for Measuring the Effectiveness of a Therapeutic Nursery Program

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Abstract
A symptom check list and a health inventory, designed to detect psychopathology in nursery and elementary school children, is described and shown to have satisfactory inter-teacher reliability when administered by experienced teachers. The 2 scales discriminate between disturbed and control nursery school populations (p < 0.01) and the symptom check list between normal males and females (p < 0.02). Applied to a follow-up study of former nursery school disturbed children, the scales reveal that the male ex-patients continue to be sicker than elementary school control cases (p < 0.05) but the female ex-patients behave like controls. In addition, social class differences in behavior among boys are detected by the scales (p < 0.01).