Internal Consistency and Cross-Informant Agreement of the Lithuanian-Translated Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale

Abstract

Educational professionals need assessments that yield psychometrically sound scores to assess students’ behavioral and emotional functioning in order to guide data-driven decision-making processes. Rating scales have been found to be effective and economical, and often multiple informant perspectives can be obtained. The agreement between multiple informants is often studied with deficit-based behavioral assessment tools; however, agreement is less well studied with strength-based behavioral assessments. In addition, when assessment instruments are translated for a new culture, the psychometric properties of assessment scores needs to be reexamined. The purpose of this study was to investigate the internal consistency and the cross-informant agreement of the Lithuanian-translated Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale to determine the initial basic psychometrics of the scores using a sample of 334 Lithuanian students. The results indicate that teacher ratings are acceptably reliable for use in research and practical settings such as schools; however, student ratings are less reliable and we caution against the use of their ratings in school-related decision-making processes. Agreement between teachers and students was moderate and higher than agreement found for deficit-based behavioral measures. Both internal consistency and cross-informant agreement was found to be similar across students both at risk and not at risk of behavioral or learning difficulties.