The Rutter Children Behaviour Questionnaire for teachers: from psychometrics to norms, estimating caseness

To establish the psychometric properties of the RCBQ for completion by teachers and to determine behavioural and emotional problems in young children, as they occur in the classroom, we asked 45 elementary school teachers of the north of Portugal to rate classroom behaviour of their pupils based on Rutter Children’s Behaviour Questionnaire for teachers. A total of 970 Portuguese mid class children (530 girls and 440 boys) aged between 8 to 11 years (M=8.47; SD=.771) were evaluated. A two factor structure was found to be suitable, exhibiting an acceptable reliability and test-retest values along a 3-month period. An average of 16.1% of the pupils exhibited some behavioural problems, where teachers described anxiety (3.1%), worry (5.1%) and unconcentration (14.1%) as the most prevalent symptoms. The findings suggest that the translated scale could serve as a rapid and useful screening instrument in clinical and in research settings.