Abstract
Children identified as Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) on the basis of teacher ratings using the SNAP Rating Scale were compared to non-ADD children on objective classroom measures including observations of classroom behavior, examination of the organization of children’s desks, and scoring of daily academic work. Analyses provided some support for the ability of the objective measures to differentiate between teacher-identified ADD and non-ADD children, though there was considerable overlap on the distributions of most variables between groups. Six measures chosen by a discriminant analysis combined to predict teacher ratings in 83% of the cases. The inclusion of academic, observational, and desk measures in the discriminant function indicates the importance of a multivariate assessment of this construct.
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Portions of this paper were presented as part of a symposium, W. Pelham (Chair),Identification and diagnosis of children with attention deficit disorder/hyperactivity, at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Washington, D.C., August 1982. We thank the director, Dr. Edward Vertuno, and the teachers and staff of the Florida State University Developmental Research School for their cooperation and efforts throughout this study. In addition, we wish to thank our observers, Susan Friedan and Stephanie Martinez, whose patience, intelligence, and dedicated effort made this study possible; Denise Gammonsly, for work on the development of the Desk Checks, and Dr. Janet Belew, whose contributions during the early phase of this research are gratefully acknowledged.
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Atkins, M.S., Pelham, W.E. & Licht, M.H. A comparison of objective classroom measures and teacher ratings of attention deficit disorder. J Abnorm Child Psychol 13, 155–167 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00918379
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00918379