Young Child Behaviour: The Views of Mothers and

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Young Child Behaviour: The Views of Mothers and Fathers a

Pamela Mack & Karen Trew

a

a

The Queen's University of Belfast Version of record first published: 13 Nov 2012.

To cite this article: Pamela Mack & Karen Trew (1992): Young Child Behaviour: The Views of Mothers and Fathers, The Irish Journal of Psychology, 13:3, 341-349 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03033910.1992.10557893

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The Irish Journal of Psychology. 1992.13.3.341-349

......................................................................................................... Young Child Behaviour: The Views of Mothers and Fathers Pamela Mack

& Karen Trew

Downloaded by [86.182.122.215] at 05:26 03 February 2013

The Queen's University of Belfast The Eyberg Child Behaviour Inventory (ECBI) was completed separately by both the mothers and the fathers of 216 children aged between 3 years and 7 years 11 months. who were participating in a Belfast Community Study. The scores on both the Intensity Scale and the Problem Scale of the ECBI were well within the normal range. There was a significantly higher level of agreement between mothers' and fathers' ratings of their child on the Intensity Scale (frequency of the behaviour) than on the Problem Identification Scale. There were significant gender and age effects on the Intensity Scale but not on the Problem Scale. The results suggest that, whereas it is sometimes reasonable to use mothers' and fathers' combined informants, caution should be exercised in labelling child behaviour as problematic .

......................................................................................................... Conduct disorder is a common problem in childhood, with estimates of one quarter of all preschool children showing behaviour problems at some point in their early years (Richman, Stevenson & Graham, 1982) and 4%-10% of children in Britain and the US meeting the criteria for conduct disorder (Robins, 1981). One third to one half of child and adolescent clinic referrals are estimated to be for conduct disordered problems, thus referrals of this kind place great demands on professional services (Webster-Stratton, 1991). The prevalence of conduct-disordered behaviour in childhood, combined with evidence that such problems are stable over time and are resistant to treatment, emphasises the importance of early identification and intervention for these children (Webster-Stratton, 1990). The past decade has seen the increasing use of behavioural inventories as one method of measuring childhood behaviour disturbance. Many inventories have been devised and are available to the practising clinician as screening measures (McMahon, 1984), in addition to, or as an alternative to, the more traditional interview assessment, and to measure pre- to postinterventional behavioural Address for correspondence: Karen Trew, School of Psychology, The Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast BT7 INN, Northern Ireland.

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......................................................................................................... change in treatment outcome studies (Mack, 1986; Mulllin, Proudfoot & Glanville, 1990; Webster-Stratton, 1984). Many researchers have emphasised the importance of behavioural inventories as one measure in a group of instruments commonly involving observation coding systems and other parent report measures, such as diaries of child behaviour (Eyberg & Ross, 1978; Q'Leary & Turkewitz, 1978). As Johnson & Eyberg (1975) have stated, "no one class of assessment instrument can adequately reflect change in complex human processes. All are fallible and worthy in different respects and may be best employed to complement, clarify and correct for the others." Numerous inventories have been devised; some are general screening instruments, such as the Child Behaviour Checklist (Achenbach, 1982), others are more specific and are designed to assess hyperactivity (Connors, 1969) or conduct disorders (Eyberg & Ross, 1978). However, the use of child behaviour inventories has far outdistanced their development as psychometric instruments, and relatively few have been properly standardised and validated (Mack, 1986). From a professional's point of view an inventory must not only meet the general psychometric standard of a sound assessment device but should also have clinical utility (Mack & Trew, 1991; McMahon, 1984). The Eyberg Child Behaviour Inventory (ECBI; Robinson, Eyberg & Ross, 1980) is one of the few which meets these criteria. The ECBI is a 36-item parent-rating scale measuring conduct-disordered behaviour in childhood (Boggs, Eyberg & Reynolds. 1990). A unique and valuable aspect of this inventory is the two-scale structure. It includes a Problem Scale (PS), as well as the more usual frequency-of-occurrence scale or Intensity Scale (IS). Most other inventories carry the assumption that the level of intensity of behaviOur (frequency of occurrence) equates with the level of perception of these behaviours as problematic for the rater. Research has shown that this is not necessarily the case (Mack. 1986) and that an informant's judgement of high frequency of occurrence of behaviours does not always imply perception of these behaviours as problematic. Evidence of discriminant validity of both scales of the ECBI has been demonstrated by significant differences between conduct-disordered and other clinic children, and between conduct-disordered and nondisordered children (Eyberg & Robinson, 1983; Eyberg & Ross, 1978). Research has Supported the validity of the ECBI as a concise measure of childhood conduct disorder (Boggs et al., 1990) and a sensitive measure of change in treatment outcome studies (Webster-Strauon, 1990, 1991). Research employing behaviour inventories has tended to focus on the mother-child dyad, and fathers have largely been ignored in co~munity samples except when they are used as substitute or confirmatory informants. Robinson et al. (1980), for example, had mothers as informants in 85.3% of their cases and fathers in only 10.6% of cases. Achenbach, McConaughy &

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Howell (1987) suggested there is strong evidence for considerably higher consistency between pairs of informants who play similar roles with children than between informants who play different roles. They found a correlation of .60 for pairs of informants playing similar roles, such as parents, in comparison with a correlation of .28 for informants playing different roles, such as parent and teacher. However, while Achenbach et a1. (1987) reviewed a number of studies focusing on a wide variety of subject populations and a number of different rating scales, they did not consider the two important issues of informants' judgements of the frequency of occurrence of children's behavioural and adjustment problems, and their perception of these behaviours as problematic. Although fathers' and mothers' ratings of their child have been found to be highly correlated, this does not mean that they necessarily see these behaviours in the same way. Research has indicated that in the general population fathers appear to consistently underestimate children's behaviour problems (Earls, 1980: Mack & Trew, 1991), while mothers and fathers with conduct-disordered children have been found to show large and significant differences in ratings of child behaviour (Mack, 1986: Webster-Stratton, 1885). The traditional caretaking role adopted by mothers - leading to increased exposure to child behaviour and the subsequent impact on tolerance and expectations - has been put forward as one explanation for the differences in reponing of fathers and mothers as informants. However, far more research is needed to explore the relative views and tolerance of child behaviour of fathers and mothers in the same family unit Fathers may be less available for involvement in research, possibly due to work commitments, and many children are growing up in single-parent families. However, fathers, when involved with their children, are increasingly being recognised as important informants for their child's behaviour (Mack & Trew, 1991) and important participants of treatment intervention in parent training approaches (Mack, 1986; Webster-Stratton, 1985). The purpose of this study was to discover: (i) whether natural mothers and fathers in the same family show differences in report on the ECBI; (ii) whether the child's sex and age have an impact on parental scoring on the ECBI; and (iii) whether the ECBI is a useful instrument for measuring child behaviour in the community where early identification of problems is important. METHOD Subjects The subjects for this study were children living at home with two natural parents. These children were a subsarnple of a larger community study of children selected at random from health visitor records. All children who were

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......................................................................................................... within the criteria for inclusion of the main study and who had an ECBI completed by their mother and father were included in the present study. The criteria for inclusion in the original study were that each family included one boy or girl aged between 3 years and 7 years 11 months. Only central nervous system damage or disorder and/or attendance at a paediatric outpatient clinic warranted exclusion. The original sample involved 315 children of whom 218 (91 %) were children living with two natural parents. A total of 216 children (107 girls, 109 boys) were located for whom information was available from both their natural mothers and fathers. Their mean age was 4 years 9 months (SD=16.3 months). The majority of children (78%) were in the 3-, 4- and 5-year-old age groups. The average family size was 2.56 children with 86% of the sample children being the flfSt or second born in the family. The modal social class was III (58% of the families) with 26% in social class 11 (Registrar General, 1980). Fifteen per cent of the fathers were unemployed, with 22 of these men being unemployed for one year or more. Procedure The families of the children who met the criteria for inclusion were asked by their own health visitors to participate anonymously in the research. They were told that the purpose of this study was to assess the usefulness of a behaviour survey sheet for describing children's behaviour. Each parent was then asked to complete an ECBI. In two-parent families, mothers and fathers were asked to complete an ECBI separately without reference to their partner. Families were given the opportunity to refuse, and a small number did so. A research package was provided for each family, containing two copies of the ECBI, written information and guidelines for the parents, and written health visitor guidelines. The health visitor was asked to explain the purpose of the study and the procedure for selecting target children. The ECBI was to be completed for only one child in the family aged between 3 years and 7. years 11 months. If there was more than one child between these ages, the child selected was the one whose birthday came first in the month. In the advent of twins, the health visitor was instructed to select the first born. The sealed package was then returned to the researchers. The Eyberg Child Behaviour Inventory (ECBI) is a 36-item parent rating scale of conduct disordered behaviour in children aged from 2 to 17 years. It is a parent-report measure which requires the informant to describe their child in terms of 36 behaviourally specific items which are relatively free from jargon and easy for raters to understand. These items include, for example. "Has a short attention span", "Teases or provokes other children", "Has temper tantrums" and "Refuses to eat food presented". Parents rate how often each behaviour occurs on a 7-point frequency-of-occurrence scale ranging from Never (1) to Always (7), and the ratings are summed to yield the ECBI Intensity Scale score, giving a potential range of 217 points (36-252). The

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mean score obtained for this scale in Robinson et aI.'s (1980) normative study involving 512 children in the US was 103.8 (SD=34.60; range 42-216). Parents also indicate whether or not the behaviour is currently a problem for them on a Yes/No problem-identification scale; the number of 'Yes' responses constitutes the Problem Scale score, which has a potential range of 36 points (0-36). The mean score obtained for this scale in Robinson et al.'s study was 6.9 (SD=7.8; range 0-35). From their findings, Eyberg & Ross (1978) suggested an Intensity Scale score of 127 or above, and a Problem Scale score of 11 or above, would be an indication of conduct-disordered behaviour. Previous research (Robin son et al., 1980) with normative samples of 512 children has demonstrated reliability coefficients for the ECBI from 0.86 (test-retest) to 0.98 (internal consistency). RESULTS As can be seen in Table I, the mean scores of mothers and fathers on the ECBI Intensity Scale were similar to one-another and were both below the suggested cut-off point of 127. The mean scores of mothers and fathers on the Problem Scale may also be considered within the normal range as they were below the suggested cut-off point of 11 (Eyberg & Ross, 1978). Table 1. Mean (and SD and range) of ECBI Intensity Scale and Problem Scale scores of 216 children as reported by their mothers and fathers.

......................................................................................................... Intensity Scale

Infonnants

M

SD

Range

Problem Scale

M

SD

Range

......................................................................................................... Mothers

100.36 23.77

46-168

4.57

5.24

0-22

Fathers

98.91 25.31

46-189

3.82

5.36

0-23

......................................................................................................... Analyses of variance with two between-subject variables (5 age groups and two sexes) and one within-subject variable (father vs mother) were performed on both the IS and the PS scores. The analysis of the Intensity Scale scores revealed that the main effects of both age (F=3.90; d.f=4,206; p