Teacher, parent, and peer reports of early aggression as screening measures for long-term maladaptive outcomes: Who provides the most useful information?

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: This study compared the ability of teacher, parent, and peer reports of aggressive behavior in early childhood to accurately classify cases of maladaptive outcomes in late adolescence and early adulthood. METHOD: Weighted kappa analyses determined optimal cut points and relative classification accuracy among teacher, parent, and peer reports of aggression assessed for 691 students (54% male; 84% African American and 13% White) in the fall of first grade. Outcomes included antisocial personality, substance use, incarceration history, risky sexual behavior, and failure to graduate from high school on time. RESULTS: Peer reports were the most accurate classifier of all outcomes in the full sample. For most outcomes, the addition of teacher or parent reports did not improve overall classification accuracy once peer reports were accounted for. Additional gender-specific and adjusted kappa analyses supported the superior classification utility of the peer report measure. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that peer reports provided the most useful classification information of the 3 aggression measures. Implications for targeted intervention efforts in which screening measures are used to identify at-risk children are discussed.