AN EXAMINATION OF THE VALIDITY OF TEACHER RATINGS OF STUDENT INTERNALIZING SYMPTOMS: THE ROLE OF TEACHER STRESS

Abstract

The current study examined the structural validity of a common universal screening assessment for student emotional and behavioral symptoms, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 1997, 2001), with the goal of identifying whether this universal screening assessment was invariant across high and low stress teacher groups. Further, teacher stress was examined as a predictor of ratings on the universal screening assessment and mean group differences were examined between school-related variables, teacher stress and ratings on the universal screening assessment. Data were collected from 1,860 teachers in the state of Pennsylvania, who were sampled online in fall 2019. The baseline model of the SDQ was tested, then the model was tested across configural, metric and scalar levels to determine whether the model was invariant as constraints were applied. Data indicated that the universal screening assessment, the SDQ, demonstrated adequate model fit that improved as measurement invariance testing continued. This suggests that the SDQ identified student internalizing and externalizing risk comparably across high and low stress teachers and may be appropriate to use to assess risk in settings where teachers are highly stressed. Additional analyses found that high stress teachers rated more behavioral and emotional symptoms overall than low stress teachers, with a small effect size. Additionally, high stress teachers rated fewer positive behaviors than low stress teachers in this study. However, this should be studied further in future research which includes nesting to account for district and school variables which may affect teacher stress. Implications regarding using findings to support teachers are discussed.