Convergent, Criterion and Social Validity of the Emotional and Behavioral Screener

Recent reports suggest that up to 20 % of all school-aged students demonstrate characteristics related to emotional disturbance. However, <1 % of these students actually receive special education services for ED, a percentage that has remained unchanged for nearly 30 years. Screening procedures have been developed to identify the behavioral needs of students within school-wide systems such as Multitiered System of Support, Positive Behavior Support, and Response to Intervention. While several screening tools are available at this time, many require significant time, training, and/or effort, factors which limit their practical use in schools. A new efficient assessment tool Emotional and Behavioral Screener (EBS) has recently been developed as a universal screening instrument. The purpose of this study was to examine the validity of the EBS scores, with a sample of over 600 elementary students, in comparison to scores from the Social Skills Improvement System assessment tool. Results indicated high levels of convergent validity between the scores (social skills; ρ = −0.70; and problem behavior; ρ = 0.79); strong criterion validity as assessed by differences in EBS scores between individuals with normal versus problematic scores (based on established cut-off scores) on the SSIS (social skills; d = 2.23; and problem behavior; d = 3.58) and assessed by binary classification between cut-off scores of the EBS and SSIS (AUROC range .86–.88); and adequate social validity. Implications and limitations of these results are discussed.