Developing a behavior rating scale for comparing teachers' ratings of children with and without craniofacial anomalies.

OBJECTIVE: Published psychometric tools are often insensitive to the experience of children with craniofacial anomalies (CFAs). The purposes of this study were to develop a valid and reliable assessment of behavior among children with and without CFAs and to compare teacher ratings of these two groups of children.

METHODS: Teachers were asked prospectively to assess social competence and peer acceptance among 99 consecutively evaluated school-aged patients with CFAs and 99 "controls" (classmates without CFA matched by race, gender, intellectual status, general socioeconomic status, and grade). Sixth grade was the median grade of the subjects.

OUTCOME MEASURE: Child Behavior Rating Scale (CBRS).

RESULTS: Using oblique promax rotation, four factors emerged from the CBRS with the CFA patient group and controls. The factors explained 67% of the total variance and 69% of the variance of the two groups, respectively. The four factors were: (1) self-maintenance, (2) social adjustment, (3) independence, and (4) teasing. Cronbach alpha results averaged 0.77 for the CFA group and 0.83 for the controls; test-retest reliability estimates were .93. Results demonstrate the consistency of the factors and high level of interrelationship among the items across subject groups. Expected differences (p <.05) were found among subject groups on the total score and factor 4.

CONCLUSIONS: The CBRS demonstrates psychometric worthiness. The findings indicated that patients with CFA had lower total scores on the CBRS, and they were rated as experiencing more teasing than their matched peers.