The Boston Teacher Questionnaire. 2. Assessments of validity

The Boston Teacher Questionnaire. 3. A reassessment

The prevalence of different types of dysfunction in school was assessed with the Boston Teacher Questionnaire, completed for 1923 children born 8 years earlier in a university-affiliated maternity hospital. Cluster analyses of 15 items on the questionnaire resulted in six two-item clusters and one three-item cluster that were identical for girls and boys. We identified children as having a syndrome if they possessed all features of the cluster-defined syndrome. The most prevalent syndrome, consisting of both daydreaming and distractibility items, occurred in 18.5% of boys and 11.5% of girls. Boys were also more likely than girls to be identified as having the reading syndrome (11.6% and 7.7%, respectively), the hyperactivity/impulsivity syndrome (6.1% and 1.5%), and the syndrome characterized by frustration intolerance and peer problems (9.5% and 4.0%). The prevalences of the remaining three syndromes were similar in both sexes (arithmetic, 11.3% and 10.3%; difficulty following instructions, 5.1% and 4.7%; and the tasks syndrome [characterized by impersistence/dependence/inflexibility], 5.5% and 5.4%). More than 40% of boys and girls with one syndrome also had another. The lower prevalences in this sample than in an earlier-born sample assessed with the same instrument were confined to boys. Reasons for this temporal decrease in one sex only remain obscure. Girls with the reading syndrome were 10 times more likely, and boys with the reading syndrome were five times more likely, than their peers to receive special services and to have repeated a grade.

The Boston Teacher Questionnaire. 1. Definition of syndromes

To obtain information about the academic function of 9-year-old children from their school teachers, we created a short, forced-choice questionnaire that asked about the child's knowledge and use of arithmetic tables, reading, spelling, persistence at tasks, flexibility of approach, ability to function independently, distractibility, daydreaming, impulsivity and overexcitability, hyperactivity, and ability to follow simple and sequential directions. Questionnaires were collected from the teachers of 3451 white children whose mothers had enrolled in the National Collaborative Perinatal Project. Six syndromes in girls and five in boys were identified by both cluster and factor analyses of these data. Common to both sexes were five syndromes we labeled arithmetic, tasks (ie, impersistent/dependent/inflexible), reading, attention, and hyperactive. A syndrome characterized by difficulty following directions was seen in girls only. The prevalence of these syndromes ranged from a low for hyperactivity of 2.3 per 100 girls to a high for the attention syndrome of 27.6 per 100 boys. The congruent results obtained with clustering and factor analysis, and the agreement between the observed prevalence of syndromes and prior expectations suggests that the Boston Teacher Questionnaire, as this instrument is called, identifies learning problems in 9-year-old children.