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theses

Hispanic-American youth have been identified as a high-risk group for developing behavioral and emotional difficulties. Currently, there exist few behavioral and emotional screening measures targeting young children, with even fewer accessible to the Spanish speaking populations in the U.S. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether the Preschool Behavior Screening System (PBSS) in Spanish was able to reliably provide data leading to valid inferences regarding the behaviors and emotions of preschool children. The Preschool Behavior Screening System, Parent Spanish Form (PBSS-PSF) is a two-phase screening tool used for identifying preschool children who may be at-risk for developing emotional and behavioral difficulties. The first phase of the measure includes two nomination rubrics measuring internalizing and externalizing behaviors. The second phase is a 59-item rating scale, yielding three composite scores and one total score. Following a rigorous translation process of the English version of the measure, the PBSS-PSF was field tested on 49 Spanish-speaking parents of preschool age children from four schools in New Jersey. Analyses were used to assess the relationships between PBSS-PSF Phase 1 (PBSS-PSF P1) and PBSS-PSF Phase 2 (PBSS-PSF P2), as well as prediction to a published screening measure, the BASC-2 Behavioral and Emotional Screening System (BESS), Spanish Parent form. Results indicated that the PBSS-PSF P1 nomination rubrics worked well together in identifying at-risk children. PBSS-PSF P1 was found to be a highly sensitive, but not very specific tool when predicting PBSS-PSF P2 and the BASC-2 Behavioral and Emotional Screening System, Spanish (BESS, Spanish Parent). However, PBSS-PSF P1 did not work as effectively as was expected with PBSS-PSF P2 in identifying those individuals who may be at-risk. This was due to significant difficulties parents experienced in completing the PBSS-PSF P1 nomination rubrics. Reliability coefficients for the PBSS, Spanish Parent PBSS-PSF P2 scales were found to be in the moderate, high, and excellent ranges. PBSS, Spanish PBSS-PSF P2 also yielded acceptable correlations among the Internalizing Symptoms Scale, Externalizing Symptoms Scale, Prosocial Behavior Scale, and Total Score Scale and with the BESS, Spanish Parent form. Future studies will address the observed difficulties parents experienced in completing the PBSS-PSF P1 nomination rubrics and determine the generalizability and validity of these results with different Spanish-speaking populations.

ETD_6195

Psy.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Jennifer C. Rodriguez

doi:10.7282/T3FQ9ZK0

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.