FAMILY ENVIRONMENTS OF CHILDREN WITH SCHOOL BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS

Abstract

Sunmy.-The Family Environment Scale was administered to 46 mothers whose children exhibited behavior problems at school and who had been referred for psychoeducational evaluation. When scores were compared with the norms for both nondistressed and distressed families, significant differences were noted on nine and five of the 10 subscales. Such findings suggest that this sample exhibits family environments that are more structured than those of the normative group and not as disturbed as those of the distressed group. Minimal subscale differences were found among three different recommended educational placements. Means and standard deviations for the three groups and the entire sample are provided. One of the central tenets of contemporary family systems is that individual psychological problems are associated with family dysfunction. In particular, the family systems view has been used to explain how children's emotional and behavioral problems develop and ace maintained ( 1, 6). Relating childhood psychopathology to family discord has a stronger dinical-theoretical foundation than an empirical one. One difficulty in relating children's problems to their families is that among children, psychological difficulties are often initially detected at school rather than at home (8). At the same time, there is evidence that children's behavior in school is strongly related to familial factors (2). Family background variables such as parental rejection (4), marital conflict, and poor family problem-solving (3) as well as maternal psychopathology (5) have been associated with behavior problems at school. A second issue has been the absence of an efficient, practical, and psychometrically-sound method to assess family climate. With publication of the Moos Family Environment Scale, a brief, reliable, and valid measure of family climate became available. Research suggests that the instrument is sensitive to the presence or absence of family dysfunction (7). The purpose of the present srudy was two-fold, to compare subscale scores of a group of children referred for behavior problems at school with the data for normal and distressed families (7) and to determine whether there were differences in family climate for children who, as a result of interdisciplinary evaluation, were recommended for one of three following placements: (a) a special classroom for behaviorally disordered children, (b) continued in their current academic placement with the addition of ancillary parent and/or child counseling, (c) a special educational program for cognitive-developmental