An Analysis of Response Shifts in Teacher Reports Associated with the Use of a Universal School-Based Intervention to Reduce Externalising Behaviour

Eficácia Docente e Dificuldades Emocionais/Comportamentais Infantis: Resultados do Programa FAVA

Resumo Este estudo quase-experimental avaliou os resultados do programa FAcilitando o conVívio com Alunos - FAVA, destinado a professores do ensino fundamental I, visando a promoção da eficácia docente e a redução de problemas emocionais/comportamentais infantis, aferidos pela Escala de Avaliação das Crenças de Eficácia do Professor e pelo Questionário de Capacidades e Dificuldades, respectivamente. O FAVA contemplou a psicoeducação sobre o modelo cognitivo, o desenvolvimento socioemocional e a modificação de comportamentos. Comparação entre os grupos experimentais (GE1, que recebeu intervenção completa, e GE2, sem o modelo cognitivo) e o grupo de comparação evidenciou a promoção da eficácia pessoal docente (GE2) e a redução da percepção das dificuldades emocionais/comportamentais infantis (GE1). Ressalta-se a contribuição do modelo cognitivo e da aprendizagem socioemocional em intervenções com professores.

Teacher Versus Parent Informant Measurement Invariance of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire

Background and Objectives

Obtaining a multi-informant perspective is important when assessing mental health issues in childhood and adolescence. Obtaining ratings from both parents and teachers also facilitates the evaluation of similarities and contrasts in the nature and severity of symptoms across home and school contexts. However, these informants may differ in their interpretations of observed behaviors, raising questions about the validity of comparing parents’ and teachers’ ratings.

Methods

We evaluated the cross-informant measurement invariance of one of the most widely used measures of child and adolescent mental health: The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Using data from the UK-population representative Millennium Cohort Study, we evaluated configural, metric, and scalar measurement invariance across parents and teachers when children were aged 7 (N = 10,221) and 11 (N = 10,543).

Results

Scalar measurement invariance held at both ages. Parents reported higher levels of symptoms in all domains measured at both ages as well as higher prosociality.

Conclusions

For a UK sample, valid comparisons of parent and teacher SDQ ratings at ages 7 and 11 appear to be possible, facilitating the evaluation of contextual differences in child mental health problems. Further, parents report more problem and prosocial behavior in their children than teachers attribute to them.

Consequences of ignoring the response-shift and measure non-invariant items in sleep studies: an empirical data based simulation of the treatment effect of CBT-I on dysfunctional sleep beliefs

INTRODUCTION

Previous studies have shown that psychological interventions do not only improve patients' mental symptoms (i.e., true change) but may also change the internal standards patients use to evaluate their symptoms (i.e., response shifts). Although the response shifts could reflect patients' cognitive changes toward their disorders as the interventions aim to achieve, failing to differentiate them from the true change during data analyses could bias the research conclusions. Considering this issue is seldom discussed in sleep studies, this study thus examined the impacts of response-shift items in an intervention study of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) via empirical-data based simulations.

METHOD

We used longitudinal measurement invariance tests to identify the items in an abbreviated version of the Dysfunctional Beliefs and Attitudes about Sleep Scale that are non-invariant (response shifted) against CBT-I based on data from 114 insomnia patients. The partial invariance model built accordingly was then used as a population model for simulations to examine the impacts of the response-shift items on follow-up paired t-tests.

RESULTS

Invariance tests indicate CBT-I would lift the intercept of one item in DBAS-10 and cause non-uniform calibrations in three items. The following up simulations showed that failing to exclude the intercept-lifted item from the calculations of the subscale scores would lower the probability of using paired t-test to correctly detect the treatment effect by up to 53%.

CONCLUSIONS

We recommend sleep researchers to consider the issues of response-shift when assessing sleep-related constructs in interventional studies for insomnia.