Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, Vol. 5, No. 3, 1977

The Kohn Social Competence Scale and Kohn Symptom Checklist for the Preschool Child: A Follow-Up Report a Martin K o h n 2

William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology

The focus of the present paper is on two research instruments designed to assess the behavior of children in a preschool setting as well as on two factor-analytically derived dimensions of social-emotional functioning which the instruments measure. Previously developed rating scales for the assessment of personality functioning of preschool children (see Koch, 1942; Richards & Simons, 1941; Williams, 1935) have generally been one-time efforts; the results are not embedded in a matrix of related data. We have, to date, used the Social Competence Scale and the Symptom Checklist 3 in research projects involving three different samples of preschool children (ages 3 to 5). We developed the instruments for a sample of 407 youngsters in six New York City public day care centers (for description of study sample, see Kohn & Rosman, 1971). The subjects of the second project, a 5year longitudinal study, were a 20% .random sample (N = 1,232) of all children who were enrolled in New York City public day care centers in the fall of 1967; the youngsters were followed through the fourth grade of elementary school (a full description of subjects and study methods may be found in Kohn, 1977). In the third project, a 2-year longitudinal study, 5-year-old boys (N = 287) were selected from both day care centers and public school kindergartens, and they were followed through the second grade of elementary school (sample and study methods are described in Kohn & Rosman, 1973a). The findings from this inThe work reported here was supported by Grants No. 10341, 13588, and 16944 from the National Institute of Mental Health. 2Address all correspondence to Martin Kohn, William Alanson White Institute, 20 West 74th Street, New York, New York 10023. 3In some previous articles the Symptom Checklist was referred to as the Kohn Problem Checklist. 249 This j o u r n a l is c o p y r i g h t e d by P l e n u m . Each article is available f o r $7.50 f r o m Plenum Publishing C o r p o r a t i o n , 227 West 17th Street, N e w Y o r k , N . Y . 10011.

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vestigation may have even wider generality than results from the other two studies. Day care centers serve p~fmafily lower-class and lower-middle-class chil. dren, whereas the third study sample covered a broader spectrum of the population (all except upper-class children). The objectives of the present paper are: (I) to discuss the development of the instruments, give their psychometric characteristics, and show congruence (a) between corresponding factors of the two preschool instruments, and (b) between corresponding factors of the preschool instruments and instruments measuring the behavior of children in elementary school settings; (2) to examine the two-factor model of social-emotional functioning from the point of view of validity and usefulness in studying a variety of applied issues; and (3) to offer suggestions for continued research within the framework of the two-factor model. DEVELOPMENT OF THE INSTRUMENTS The purpose of the Social Competence Scale was to assess overt classroom behavior in terms of the child's interpersonal relations. Items cover the entire spectrum from healthy to disturbed functioning. The aim in devising the Symptom Checklist was to use the scores to identify the most severely disturbed children. Items cover the principal clinical symptoms which a child might display in a preschool setting. In contrast to the Social Competence Scale, the Symptom Checklist only differentiates various degrees of disturbance, not of health. The procedures used in preparing the items of the instruments- and the conceptual underpinning - have been described in detail in a previous article (Kohn & Rosman, 1972b) and need not be repeated here. Suffice to say that after extensive pretesting, 90 items were chosen for the Social Competence Scale and 58 for the Symptom Checklist. All children (iV = 407) in six New York City day care centers were rated by the two full-time teachers in the classroom. To determine the major dimensions of the instruments, each was subjected to a factor analysis. From the correlation matrix of the Social Competence Scale items, 15 centroid factors were extracted, and 6 were rotated by means of Kaiser's (1958) normal varimax method. From the correlation matrix of the Symptom Checklist items, 12 eentroid factors were extracted, and 9 were rotated by the same procedure. We chose to work with the first two factors of each instrument since the first two factors of the Social Competence Scale accounted for 74% of the total communal variance of the six-factor rotation, and the first two factors of the Symptom Checklist accounted for slightly more than 50% of the total communal variance of the nine-factor rotation. All but one of the remaining factors accounted for considerably less than 10% of the variance.

Psychometric Characteristics of the Instruments Sr

Social Competence Scale. Both rotated factors of the Social Competence were bipolar. To indicate the behavior that is measured by the factors, the

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Table I. Items with Highest Positive and Negative Loadings on Factors I and II of the Social Competence Scalea Factor Item

I

II

.83

.01

Part A: Highest loadings on Factor I Child gets others interested in what he's doing Child manifests interest in many and varied types of things Child displays enthusiasm about work or play Child can give ideas to other children as well as go along with their ideas Child is able to express his own desires or opinions in a group Child has difficulty getting the attention of the group Child demonstrates little interest in things and activities of his environment Child fails to secure cooperation when h~ has to direct activities Child is at a loss without other children 9 directing him or organizing activities for him Child spends time sitting around, looking around, or wandering around aimlessly

.83 - . t 2 .82 -.21 .82 - . 2 0 .82

.07

-.80

.02

-.79

.I 3

-.77

.15

-.76

.07

-.74

.26

.28

.79

.13

.73

.42

.64

.28 .32

.62 .60

-.19

-.86

-.08

-.84

-.01

-.84

Part B: Highest loadings on Factor II Child cooperates with rules and regulations Child responds with immediate compliance to teacher's directions Child is able to accept teacher's ideas and suggestions for play or ways of playing Child makes transition from one activity to the next easily Child puts things away carefully Child disrupts activities of others Child expresses open defmnce against teacher's rules and regulations Child is hostile and aggressive with other childten (teases, taunts, bullies, etc.) Child tries to prevent other children from carrying out routines Child quarrels with other children

-.11 -.82 .00 -.80

aFrom Kohn and Rosman (1972b). Copyright 1972 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. Reprintedby permission.

five items w h i c h had the highest positive loadings and the five items which had the highest negative loadings o n each f a c t o r are shown in Table I. F a c t o r I relates to use o f o p p o r t u n i t i e s available in the classroom setting. The positive items indicate curiosity, outgoingness, and j o y in interpersonal interactions; the negative items suggest lack o f interest in the e n v i r o n m e n t , shyness,

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and absence o f interpersonal interactions. F a c t o r I was labeled Interest-Participation versus Apathy-Withdrawal. F a c t o r II relates to compliance with rules and regulations established by the classroom teacher. The positive items show willingness to live within the classroom structure; the negative items indicate disobedience o f the teacher and hostile interactions with peers. Factor II was called Cooperation-Compliance versus Anger-Defiance. The interrater reliability correlations (Spearman-Brown corrected) between pairs o f teachers were .77 and .80 for Factors I and II, respectively. The correlation between Factor I scores and F a c t o r II scores was .33, slightly higher than desirable but low enough to show that the two factors are discriminable dimensions o f children's functioning. Symptom Checklist. The two major factors o f the S y m p t o m Checklist were unipolar. To convey what the factors represent, the five items with the highest loadings on each dimension are presented in Table II. It is evident that the Factor I and II items o f the S y m p t o m Checklist cover behavior similar to that measured by the negative poles o f the corresponding factors o f the Social

Table 11. Items with Highest Loadings on Factors 1 and II of the Symptom Cheeklista Factor Item

I

II

.85 .81 .79

.07 .04 .11

.78 .73

.06 .10

.01

.78

.01

.76

.03

.75

.10

.71

.14

,71

Part A: Highest loadings on Factor I Keeps to himself; remains aloof, distant Fails to play with other children Fails to take part in activities unless urged Has a mournful, downcast expression, looks solemn, seldom smiles Stares blankly into space Part B: Highest loadings on Factor ll Gets angry when interrupted at play by adult as part of normal routines (not punishment) Treats other children with deliberate cruelty; bullies other children or hits or picks on them Screams, bangs objects, etc., when angry, irritated, or frustrated Fails to obey or follow instructions or directions of adult; "talks back" to adults Gets angry or annoyed when addressed by adult, even in a friendly manner (not reprimand)

aFrom Kohn and Rosman (1972b). Copyright 1972 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

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Competence Scale. We labeled the dimensions Apathy-Withdrawal (I) and AngerDefiance (II). The interrater reliability correlations (Spearman-Brown corrected) between pairs of teachers were .73 for both factors. The correlation between Factor I scores and Factor II scores was .18, low enough to indicate that the two factors are independent of each other. Comparison of. the Instruments. For practical purposes, the Social Competence Scale is the more useful of the two instruments since it encompasses a wider range of behavior- from healthy to disturbed. The shorter Symptom Checklist, which focuses on presence or absence of pathology, can be completed more rapidly - in 5 minutes; however; there is r.educed reliability. In our work we have generally used both instruments and pooled the respective factor scores for enhanced reliability.

Congruence Among Instru.ments In order to determine whether the apparently similar factor dimensions of the two instruments measured the same behavioral phenomena, we correlated the corresponding Social Competence Scale and Symptom Checklist factor scores, We found that the corresponding factors were strongly correlated ( - . 7 5 , Factor I; -.79, Factor II); the r values between noncorresponding factors were considerably lower (between - . 13 and -.25). Next, we tested congruence between corresponding dimensions of other instruments assessing social-emotional functioning in the classroom. We chose two instruments which had been applied to elementary school pupils: Peterson's Problem Checklist (1961) (see also Quay, this journal), which had yielded two major factors that Peterson had termed Personality problem (Factor I) and Conduct problem (Factor II), and the Schaefer Classroom Behavior Inventory (Schaefer, 1971; Schaefer & Aaronson, 1966; Schaefer, Droppleman, & Kalverboer, 1965), which had yielded conceptually similar (but bipolar) factors entitled Extroversion versus Introversion (Factor I) and Love versus Hostility (Factor II). Schaefer and his associates also identified a third major dimension, High versus Low Task Orientation. To ascertain the magnitude of the correlations (a) between Factor I scores of the two Kohn instruments and the Peterson and Schaefer instruments, and (b) between the Factor II scores of the four instruments, 287 children were rated by their day care and kindergarten teachers on the Social Competence Scale, the Symptom Checklist, and the Schaefer Classroom Behavior Inventory. One year later, at the end of first grade, the children were rated by their elementary school teacher on the Peterson Problem Checklist and the Schaefer Classroom Behavior Inventory. At the preschool level, the correlations between corresponding factors of the two Kohn instruments and the Schaefer instrument were high (median r =

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.78); the correlations between noncorresponding factors were far more modest (median r = .21). At the first grade level, the correlations between corresponding factors of the Peterson and Schaefer instruments were also substantial (-.64, Factor I; - . 7 6 , Factor II); correlations between noneorresponding factor scores were appreciably lower (between - . 12 and -.42).4 We concluded that, irrespective of the labels applied to the factors by the different research teams, the corresponding dimensions of the four instruments measured essentially the same behavior. These empirical findings buttressed our long-standing belief in the generality of the two-factor model of socialemotional functioning and its utility as a tool in mental health research. THE TWO-FACTOR MODEL OF SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL FUNCTIONING The present author recently demonstrated in a review of the literature (Kohn, 1977) that the behavior patterns represented by Factors I and II have been repeatedly identified in the literature of the last 50 years as the two principal dimensions of functioning by researchers who have studied children of different ages, in different settings, and employing different methods of data collection and analysis. However, the conceptual similarity of the findings was not readily apparent because each research team used different terminology to identify the behavioral phenomena they had uncovered. Until the work described in the preceding section, no one had provided empirical evidence that the dimensions emerging from different studies measured the same or similar personairy functioning. We ascribe our results to the fact that the factors are broad, accounting for an appreciable portion of the variance of social-emotional functioning. Not only are the dimensions replicable across instruments but, as we will show presently, they manifest stability over time and generality across settings. Our position is consistent with Peterson's (1968) conclusion that narrow factors which account for a small amount of the variance are unstable and not replicable.

Clinical Validity of the Factors We are satisfied that the two factor dimensions have clinical relevance for the following reasons: As part of the 5-year longitudinal project, we compared the ratings for all children (N = 1,232) made shortly after the children enrolled in the day care program with data from two independent reference groups of severely disturbed youngsters. One group was composed of children in three therapeutic day nurs, Additional data on Congruenceare provided in Kohn (1977).

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cries (N = 44), and the other consisted of patients in a local mental hospital (N = 30). All children h. " ~'een placed in these facilities because of psychiatric disorders. Diagnoses ranged from severe emotional disturbance accompanied by mental retardation to schizophrenia to autism. We found that boys as well as girls in the two independent reference groups scored significantly higher on both Apathy-Withdrawal and Anger-Defiance than the total day care sample. Differences between mean scores were at the .005 level of significance in all instances but one (p < .05 for girls in the mental hospital group). We then divided the day care sample into five reference groups on the basis of two teacher ratings of overall functioning in the classroom. One measure was a 3-point Global Impairment scale and the other a 2-point Referral rating indicating whether or not the child required psychiatric, psychological, or remedial treatment. Two of the groups (Well functioning and Moderately well functioning) were deemed emotionally healthy; the other three groups 0~oofly functioning, Remedial treatment, and Therapy) were considered emotionally impaired. Using this yardstick, 26.3% of the boys and 20_3% of the girls in the day care sample were disturbed. Data analysis showed that the children in the disturbed groups were rated significantly higher on Apathy-Withdrawal and Anger-Defiance than the youngsters in the healthy groups. With one exception, the significance of the differences between means was at the .005 level (the exception was p < .01 for girls, Poorly functioning vs. Moderately well functioning). In the same longitudinal study we used the global ratings to test the validity of the factors in two other ways: (a) We correlated the factor scores with the corresponding Global Impairment rating during each year of data collection. We found sizable, relatively stable, and highly significant r values, indicating that the children who received high scores on Apathy-Withdrawal and the children who received high scores on Anger-Defiance were severely impaired. (b) The resuits of a hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that preschool ApathyWithdrawal and Anger-Defiance scores were highly correlated (p ~< .001) with Global Impairment and Referral ratings obtained 5 years later. The reader who is interested in further details will fred a complete set of data and interpretations in Kohn (1977).

Other Perspectives on Validity Analysis of the interpersonal relations of children with extremely high scores on Apathy-Withdrawal (N = 32) and children with extremely high scores on Anger-Defiance (iV= 32) has shown differeJitial responses to therapeutic intervention, different mother-child relationships, and differential patterns of peer interactions in the classroom. The subjects were a subsample of the day care

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Kohn

population for whom we developed the Social Competence Scale and the Symptom Checklist. Interactions with Teachers. We studied the effectiveness o f a program of therapeutic intervention in which the teacher was the change agent (Kohn & Roseman, 1971). Each teacher worked individually with one disturbed child in her classroom for 1 hour a day for 5 weeks; at the end of the 5 weeks, the time spent in individual contact was gradually tapered off over a 2-week period. The apathetic-withdrawn children were initially unresponsive to the teacher but gradually became attached to her. This attachment seemed to be specific to the teacher and not part of a general eagerness to venture into the environment. As the individualized teaching progressed, these children found it increasingly difficult to separate from the teacher at the end of the hour of individualized teaching. On the other hand, the angry-defiant children responded with immediate interest, and they were jealous when the teacher directed her attention toward other youngsters at the conclusion of the individualized teaching session. As the intervention program continued, however, they became less involved and found it increasingly easy to leave the teacher at the end of the hour of individualized teaching. Mother-Child Relationship. The contrasting reactions of the two groups of children led us to speculate that they had experienced markedly different relationships with their mothers. Counselors attached to the day care centers interviewed the mothers about relatively concrete events during the first 3 years of the child's life. The interview data were rated along two dimensions, Maternal concern and Continuity of maternal care. The findings showed that the child high on Apathy-Withdrawal had an overprotective mother while the child high on Anger-Defiance had a rejecting and undependable mother. These results enabled us to explain the different reactions to individualized teaching. We postulated that children high on Apathy-Withdrawal cope with the mother's oversolicitousness through withdrawal and submission but when they are exposed to a nonintrusive and friendly approach, they gradually develop trust and dependency. Children high on Anger-Defiance cope with rejection and erratic care by engaging in provocative and disruptive behavior to elicit attention. When they receive the attention they crave, they become readily attached. However, an interruption in the relationship leads to frustration and in. creased acting out. When they realize that the close contact cannot be mainrained, they lose all interest in the relationship, presumably because it repeats the pattern of discontinuity that they experienced with their mother. Interactions with Peers. We compared the peer relations of the apatheticwithdrawn children with those of the angry-defiant children (Kohn & Parries, 1974). The rating of the children had been carried out by the day care teachers; the observations which formed the basis of the interaction analysis were made by independent raters. We studied frequency of peer interactions, frequency of initiating action, percentage of active interactions, and percentage of positive interactions.

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The major findings were that (a) the higher the child's Apathy-Withdrawal score, the lower the frequency of peer interactions, the !c ~r the frequency of initiating action, and the lower the percentage of peer interactions in which the child played an active role; and (b) the higher the child's Anger-Defiance score, the higher the percentage of peer interactions in which he played an active role and the lower the percentage of interactions in which he played a positive role. Further - more detailed - analysis of a subsample revealed: (a) Solitary activities constituted a larger percentage of the total behavior of the apatheticwithdrawn than of the angry-defiant children. (b) Negative and hostile behavior accounted for a larger proportion of the total acts of angry-defiant than of apathetic-withdrawn youngsters. (c) Similarly, verbal interactions constituted a higher proportion of the total interactions of angry-defiant than of apatheticwithdrawn children. (d) As targets of negative and hostile behavior, the children high on Anger-Defiance stood up for themselves more often than the youngsters high on Apathy-Withdrawal. As yet another indication of validity -- when the behavior ratings were regarded as constituting the criterion domain, we found some evidence that the factors were differentially related to such antecedent variables as social class (as measured by mother's education) and intactness of family. Specifically, at the elementary school level, low social class was predictive of Apathy-Withdrawal for girls, and broken family life (generally due to father absence) was predictive of Anger-Defiance for boys (see Kohn, 1977). We turn now to some of the other issues which we have investigated with~n the framework of the two-factor model of social-emotional functioning.

Factors as Predictors of Cognitive Functioning The two factors have been tested repeatedly to determine their relationship to intellectual performance. Several investigations have yielded similar findings - namely, that they are differentially related. Factor L Disturbed Factor 1 behavior (Apathy-Withdrawal) was associated with stereotyped thinking (Kohn, 1968) and was predictive of academic deficits in preschool and elementary school children (Kohn, 1977; Kohn & Rosman, 1972a, 1973a, 1974). Outcome measures have included, among others, the standardized verbal and arithmetic achievement tests administered by the New York City Board of Education (verbal achievement was examined in second and third grades; arithmetic achievement, in third grade); teacher ratings, tasks, and tests developed in this laboratory; Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale Form L-M (Terman & Merrill, 1960); Caldwell Preschool Inventory (Caldwell, 1967); and Raven's Progressive Matrices (Raven, 1956). Researchers who have similarly found a relationship between withdrawn behavior and low achievement in young children include Emmerich (1977) and Richards and McCandless (1972). A curvilinear analysis undertaken as part of the 5-year longitudinal study showed that not only was Apathy-Withdrawal implicated in poor cognitive func-

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Kohn

tioning but healthy Factor I behavior (Interest-Participation) was related to aboveaverage performance on the verbal and arithmetic subtests of the Metropolitan Achievement Tests in third grade (Kohn, 1977). We have hypothesized that the apathetic-withdrawn child learns less than the child high on Interest-Participation because (a) he is listless and inhibited and has a low rate of social interaction; and (b) he is mentally inert and reluctant to engage in thought processes, such as hypothesis formulation and testing, selective attention, discrimination, etc. On the other hand, the child high on InterestParticipation learns more because (a) he is curious and enthusiastic and exposes himself to diverse environmental stimuli; and (b) he is mentally alert and actively thinks about people and events in an effort to understand the world about him. Factor II. The relationship between Factor II and achievement was found to be much weaker and somewhat ambiguous. In the study of 5-year-old boys (N = 287) Anger-Defiance was unrelated to a series of indices of cognitive functioning (Kohn & Rosman, 1973a). In the lo.ngitudinal study (N = 1,232) angrydefiant behavior in preschool predicted to low scores in arithmetic and, to a lesser extent, deficiency in verbal skills but not to other achievement criteria. Nor was Factor II as potent a predictor as Factor I. When the point of prediction was first grade, the correlations underwent a change in direction, and although r values were at low levels of significance or did not even reach significance, the data implied that Cooperation-Compliance (the positive pole of the Factor I1 dimension) signaled potential underachievement. We have speculated that the cooperative-compliant child may be so obedient and conforming that he has given up initiative (Kohn, 1977). Our results are at variance with those published by the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (1967)and Rutter, Tizard, and Whitmore (1970), who have reported that acting-out behavior was implicated in school failure. However, in those studies the samples consisted of preadolescents and adolescents, and it is possible that Anger-Defiance becomes associated with academic deficit at a later age. It should be noted that in the research described above, Schaefer's Factor III, High versus Low Task Orientation, and a number of demographic and cognitive variables were also used as predictors of cognitive functioning. Discussion of these variables is outside the scope of the present paper (see Kohn, 1977). Factors as Predictors o f Social-Emotional Functioning

Each factor has shown moderate longitudinal persistence for a 5-year period, with each preschool measure predicting uniquely to the corresponding later measure. Angry-defiant behavior was found to be somewhat more stable than apathetic-withdrawn behavior. The results of both a hierarchical multiple regression analysis covering the period from preschool through fourth grade and a correlational analysis of data collected at successive age levels justify the con-

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clusion that the Social Competence Scale and the Symptom Checklist may be used in any program attempting early identification of groups of children who are likely to remain healthy as well as of groups of children who are likely to be at risk of social-emotional difficulties as they grow older. This subject is covered at length in Kohn (1977).

Cross-Setting Generality of the Factors In addition to longitudinal stability of functioning, we have been interested in consistency of functioning across settings (Kohn & Rosrnan, 1973b). A sample of 287 boys was rated by the teacher on the Social Competence Scale and the Symptom Checklist as well as on the Schaefer Classroom Behavior Inventory to assess preschool classroom behavior. We developed a 26-item Test Behavior Inventory to measure the children's social-emotional functioning in a testing situation. (The test battery included standard measures of intellectual ability, such as the Stanford-Binet and Raven's Matrices, ~ well as a variety of briefer tasks tapping cognitive functioning.) The items of the rating instrument were written so as to be appropriate both to the factor dimensions and to the testtaking situation. The importance of using items pertinent to the setting in which behavior is assessed cannot be overemphasized. Research assistants administered the tests and completed the Test Behavior Inventory. The instrument was factor analyzed, and again two major orthogonal dimensions accounting for an appreciable proportion of the variance emerged. We obtained significant correlations between the corresponding factors of the classroom and test-taking behavior instruments (.49, Factor I; A3, Factor If); the r values between noncorresponding factors were very low, ranging from - . 0 2 to .07.

Elementary school classroom functioning was measured by the Peterson Problem Checklist and the Schaefer Classroom Behavior Inventory, but the same Test Behavior Inventory was used to assess functioning in the elementary school testing situation. (The test bettery consisted of the Metropolitan Achievement Tests, Porteus Mazes [Porteus, 1965], and Goodenough Figure Drawing [Harris, 1963].) Research assistants again administered the tests and completed the rating instrument. The elementary school pattern of correlations between classroom and test behavior ratings was generally similar to the preschool pattern. Furthermore, similar trends were observed when a time differential was introduced, i.e., in the correlation coefficients between preschool functioning in one setting and elementary school functioning in another. Since the same instrument was used for both sets of test behavior ratings while different instruments were used for the preschool and elementary school classroom behavior ratings, these dataprovide further support for the congruence hypothesis. We might add that cross-situational correlations averaging close to .4 were found for Factor I, and cross-situational correlations averaging close to .6 were

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obtained for Factor II when the two-factor model was measured in classroom and residence settk'lgs at Geller House, a short-term residential diagnostic center maintained by the Jewish Board o f Guardians for adolescent offenders (Koretzky, 1976; Koretzky & Kohn, 1976). s These findings are further evidence that the factors represent relatively enduring personality dispositions. We want to stress again that invariance of functioning can only be demonstrated if the rating instrument is appropriate (a) to the trait being studied, and (b) to the environment in which behavior is being assessed. This is a precaution that we have taken in all of the work which has been described here but which, as we have noted previously (see Kohn & Rosman, 1973b), has been disregarded by other researchers.

IMPLICATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS The scope and diversity of the research'topics which have been investigated by means of the Social Competence Scale and the Symptom Checklist attest to the usefulness of the instruments for assessing the social-emotional functioning of the preschool child. Reliability, validity, and outcome data support the proposition that the instruments are equally serviceable for research purposes and for pragmatic applications, such as programs which focus on early detection and treatment of emotional disorders. It should be added that the instruments are reasonably economical to apply, requiring only a relatively small investment of teacher time. The two factor dimensions measured by the instruments have a generality that Peterson (1961) has characterized as "enormous" (p. 206). Each is a unique behavior pattern which has been found to differ from the other with respect to antecedent relationships (e.g., mother-child relationship, social class), interaction patterns with teachers and peers, association with academic performance, and longitudinal stability. Taken together, the factors account for most of the variability of children's classroom functioning and constitute a parsimonious yet psychologically meaningful model for child personality structure. How can we extend the empirical and pragmatic utility of the instruments? First, we need to develop instruments which measure Factor I and II functioning in other crucial settings, e.g., the home and the neighborhood peer group. Ackerson (1931, 1942), Kagan and Moss (1962), and Robins (1966) used data collected by different observers in a variety of environments but, to date, we lack the methodology for systematic multiple-setting assessments. This approach would enable us to examine more fully (a) the hypothesis that the two major factors are enduring personality dispositions which are 5Abbreviated forms of the Peterson and Schaefer instruments (Schaefer, 1975) were used to measure behavior.

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stable over time and across settings, and (b) the extent to which the pooling of congruent factor scores from different situations enhances the magnitude of predictions of risk of emotional disturbance in adolescence and adulthood. As Garmezy (1974) has pointed out in his review of risk research, both disturbed Factor I and Factor II behavior patterns have been found to be antecedents of schizophrenia and other types of psychopathology. A number of researchers (Robins, 1"966; Shea, 1972) have reported that children high on Factor II problem behavior (Anger-Defiance) are at especially high risk of developing severe emotional difficulties in later years. Second, we suggest that investigators who measure the classroom behavior of preschool children use existing instruments instead of creating their own rating scales, which generally seek the same information in a slightly revised form. Through standardization and replication it will be possible to build up a body of data in the child development field. Toward that end, the author has given permission to a number of doctoral candidates and research organizations working under government contracts to Ose the Social Competence Scale and the Symptom Checklist in their projects. Some results of these investigations have already become available. Of help, too, would be a willingness on the part of researchers to use identical terminology in referring to the factors instead of inventing new designations for the same behavioral phenomena. In that way, we will avoid further proliferation of labels which only confuse the picture. Rather, we will make progress toward resolving issues of theoretical and/or practical interest to all who are concerned with the emotional well-being of children. REFERENCES Ackerson, L. Children's behavior problems, I: Incidence, genetic and intellectual factors. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931. Ackerson, L. Children's behaviorproblems, H: Relative importances and interrelations among traits. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942. Caldwell, B. M. Directions for administering and scoring the Preschool Inventory. Princeton, New Jersey: Educational Testing Service, 1967. Emmerich, W. Structure and development of personal-social behaviors in economicallydisadvantaged preschool children. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 1977, 95, 125-245. Garmezy, N. Children at risk: The search for the antecedents of schizophrenia. Part t. Conceptual models and research methods. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 1974, 8, 14-90. Harris, D. B. Children's drawings as measures o f intellectual maturity. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963. Kagan, J., & Moss, H. A. Birth to maturity: A study in psychological development. New York: Wiley, 1962. Kaiser, H. F. The varimax criterion for analytic rotation in factor analysis. Psychometrika, 1958, 23, 187-200. Koch, H. L. A factor analysis of some measures of the behavior of preschool children. Journal of General Psychology, 1942, 2 7, 257-287. Kohn, M. Competence and symptom factors in the preschool chtTd. Unpublished manuscript, 1968. (Available from William Alanson White Institute, New York, New York 10023)

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