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Behavioral and Emotional Problems in Chinese Adolescents: Parent and Teacher Reports

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ABSTRACT

Objective

This study examined behavioral and emotional problems in Chinese adolescents.

Method

A sample of 1,694 adolescents aged 12 to 16 years participated in this study in 1997. Parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), and teachers completed the Teacher's Report Form (TRF).

Results

For both parent and teacher reports, internalizing syndromes were scored higher in girls and externalizing syndromes were scored higher in boys. Scores on most of the CBCL and TRF subscales were higher for the older adolescents. The overall prevalence rates of parent-and teacher-reported behavioral problems were 23.1% and 19.2%, respectively. The eight cross-informant syndromes were highly comorbid, with a significant association across syndromes (mean odds ratio = 16.1 for CBCL and 22.5 for TRF). Correlations between parent and teacher reports were 0.51 for eight subscales and 0.68 for Total Problems.

Conclusions

These findings demonstrate that behavioral and emotional problems tend to increase with age and cluster in the same individuals. The prevalence rates of behavioral problems in Chinese adolescents are comparable to those reported in Western countries. In contrast to findings for Western samples, parent reports of behavioral problems were highly correlated with teacher reports.

Section snippets

Participants and Procedures

The present study is part of an epidemiological survey on mental health problems in school children and adolescents between 6 and 16 years of age in Linyi Prefecture of Shandong Province in 1997. A detailed description of the study has been reported elsewhere (Liu et al., 2000c).

Briefly, 12 towns were randomly selected from a list of all the towns in the prefecture. Permission to conduct the survey was granted by the local education committee, which was then asked to select one elementary

Gender and Age Effects on the CBCL and TRF Scale Scores

Mean CBCL and TRF total scale scores were 23.23 (SD = 18.92) and 25.51 (SD = 18.91), respectively. As Table 1 shows, boys obtained significantly higher scores than girls on the CBCL Aggressive Behavior, Externalizing, and Total Problems subscales, and on the TRF Withdrawn, Social Problems, Attention Problems, Aggressive Behavior, Externalizing, and Total Problems subscales, yet male sex accounted for less than 1% of the variance. Girls scored significantly higher than boys on the Anxious/

DISCUSSION

In this study, we investigated the behavioral and emotional problems of Chinese adolescents by using both parent and teacher reports. With the exception of mean TRF total score in girls, both the CBCL and TRF Total Problems scores were comparable to those of American normative samples (Achenbach, 1991a, Achenbach, 1991b). Internalizing problems were scored markedly high by both Chinese parents and teachers compared with American teachers and parents. The pattern of findings for externalizing

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    This research was supported by Shandong Medical Research Foundation, People's Republic of China, and by a Japan Science and Technology Agency Fellowship.

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