Behavior Rating Scales

Description of the Strategy

The use of behavior rating scales as a method of assessing behavioral, social, and emotional problems of students has increased dramatically since about 1980. Behavior rating scales are used frequently either as a primary component of an assessment battery or as a key means of obtaining information on a student before implementing an intervention. As behavior rating scales have become more widely used, there have been numerous advances in research on rating scale technology that have strengthened the desirability of using this form of assessment. Rating scales provide a standardized format for the development of summary judgments regarding a student's behavioral characteristics by an informant who knows the student well. The informant is usually a parent or teacher, but other individuals who are familiar with the student might legitimately be a source for behavior rating scale data, including work supervisors, classroom aides, temporary surrogate parents, and extended family members.

As an assessment methodology, behavior rating scales are less direct than behavioral observation or structured behavioral interviewing because they measure perceptions of specified behaviors rather than providing a first-hand measure of the existence of the behavior. Rating scales provide data that tend to be substantially more reliable than either unstructured clinical interviewing or projective-expressive techniques, such as drawing and apperception tests.

As behavior rating scales became more widely used during the late 1970s, they were often viewed with suspicion and used as a last resort by behaviorally oriented clinicians, but as the research base and technological refinements in rating scales became more advanced, their acceptance has increased among both researchers and clinicians. The current widespread popularity of behavior rating scales is not incidental, as they offer many advantages for conducting assessments of children. The primary advantages of behavior rating scales can be summarized as follows:

• In comparison with direct behavioral observation, behavior rating scales are less expensive in terms of professional time needed and amount of training required.
• Behavior rating scales are capable of providing information on important low-frequency behaviors that might be missed with a limited number of direct observation sessions.
• Behavior rating scales are an objective assessment method that provides more reliable data than unstructured interviews or projectiveexpressive techniques.
• Behavior rating scales can be used to assess students who cannot readily provide self-report information about themselves.
• Rating scales capitalize on observations over a period of time in a student's “natural” environment (i.e., school or home settings).
• Rating scales capitalize on the judgments and observations of persons who are highly familiar with the student's behavior, such as parents or teachers, and are considered to be “expert” informants.

Given these six advantages, rating scales are widely used and get at the “big picture” of the assessment problem in a short amount of time, at moderate cost, and with a good deal of technical precision and practical utility.

Research Basis

Behavior rating scales offer a socially valid and clinically useful assessment strategy. Although their major appeal is undoubtedly their ease of use and cost effectiveness, behavior rating scales also appear to tap constructs unanswered by other methods; namely, the evaluative judgment of a student's behavior by significant others in his or her environment.

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