A Comparison of Systematic Screening Tools for Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Abstract

Early identification of students who might develop emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) is essential in preventing negative outcomes. Systematic screening tools are available for identifying elementary-age students with EBD, including the Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders (SSBD) and the Student Risk Screening Scale (SRSS). The SSBD is considered the gold standard for systematic EBD screening. The brevity of the SRSS is often favored with respect to resource allocation. The authors evaluated the concurrent validity of the SRSS to predict SSBD results when used to detect school children with externalizing or internalizing behavior concerns. Between low- and high-risk categories, the SRSS had excellent accuracy for predicting both externalizing (95%) and internalizing (93%) problems on the SSBD. Sensitivity (94%) and specificity (95%) were both excellent for externalizing behavior, but for internalizing behavior, sensitivity was lower (44%), while specificity was excellent (95%). Receiver-operating characteristic analysis also suggested that the SRSS was more accurate for detecting externalizing than internalizing behaviors. Limitations and future directions are offered.