Category: Diagnosis and assesment of ADHD
Abstract title: Serbian children are less hyperactive than American children according to the teacher assessment
Jasminka Marković1,2, Dragan Mitrović1,2, Jelena Srdanović-Maraš1, Valentina Šobot1,2, Slobodan Sekulić2,3
1Center for child and adolescent psychiatry, Institut of psychiatry, Clinical Center of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, Serbia
2Medical faculty Novi Sad, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia
3 Institut of neurology, Clinical Center of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, Serbia
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Presenting author: Jasminka Marković, tel. 00381652826535, PhD student/post doc (two months ago I completed my Ph.D.),
Introduction and objectives: The present study contributes to an international program of colaborative research investigating the multicultural robustness of Teacher Report Form. Main purpose is to obtain comprenhensive picture on TRF problem-scales data for children in Serbia and compare it to the original American sample.
Methods: The study was conducted as a cross-sectional non-experimental correlational study on a total of 492 randomly selected school aged children, 7 to 11 years, who attended lower grades of elementary schools in the city of Novi Sad, Serbia’s second largest city. Teachers completed TRFquestionnaires. Comparison of behavioural/emotional syndromes raw scores of this study with those found by Achenbach (2001), as well as comparison between boys and girls row scores, was performed by t test.
Results: The TRF mean value for Total Problems is 18.96 (SD 19.78) for boys and 13.96 (SD 14.86) for girls. Concerning boys/girls differences, the teachers’ reports showed higher scores in boys on 9 of 17 scales. Internal consistency for TRF range between 0.51 and 0.98. Comparing American sample with our sample we found that in boys reports, the Serbian sample showed lower scores in Attention Problems, Total problems and DSM-ADHD, while in girls reports there were six scales in the Serbian sample with lower scores and only one scale with higher score.
Discussion: This is the first study that provided us with standardized TRF data specific for our socio-cultural circle. The findings indicate that teachers’ reports of boys problems were similar across highly diverse societies but were less similar when we compare girls problems. The most robust finding of this study is that Serbian teachers report less ADHD problems among children than their collegues in U.S.A.
Key words: ADHD, TRF, empirically based assessment
References:
1. Achenbach, T. M., & Rescorla, L. A. (2001). Manual for the ASEBA School-Age Forms & Profiles
Burlington, VT: University of Vermont, Research Center for Children, Youth, & Families.
2. Achenbach, T. M. (2010). Multicultural evidence-based assessment of child and adolescent psychopathology. Transcult Psychiatry, 47(5), 707-726.
3. Rescorla, L. A., Achenbach, T. M., Ginzburg, S., Ivanova, M. Y., Dumenci, L., & Almqvist, F. (2007). Consistency of teacher-reported problems for students in 21 countries. School Psychology Review, 36, 91-110.