An Investigation of the Types of Problem Behaviors Exhibited by K–12 Students with Emotional or Behavioral Disorders in Public School Settings

Abstract

This cross-sectional study used random sampling procedures to (a) establish proportions of K–12 students meeting borderline and clinical cut scores on the Teacher Report Form (TRF) of the Child Behavior Checklist, (b) examine age and gender differences in distributions of students meeting borderline or clinical levels of problem behavior, and (c) determine proportions of students displaying comorbid problem behaviors. Overall, our findings indicate that (a) more students met borderline or clinical cut scores on the Total and Externalizing broad band scales than on the Internalizing scale, (b) larger proportions of children met the cut scores on the TRF Total, Externalizing, and Internalizing broad bands and a majority of narrow band scales than adolescents, (c) larger proportions of girls than boys met cut scores on the three broad band and four narrow band scales (i.e., Aggressive Behavior, Withdrawn, Social Problems, Attention Problems), and (d) larger proportions of children exhibited clinical levels of comorbidity on the TRF broad and narrow bands than adolescents. The results, limitations, and implications are discussed.