Avaliação da psicopatologia em crianças e adolescentes

: contributos para a aferição da bateria ASEBA para o período escolar

Abstract

In our society, children are evaluated since their birth through their physical condition, behaviour, language, cognition, learning capabilities, social competences, humour and personality traits. Evaluation strategies are guided by assumptions about children development and behaviour according currently accepted social and cultural norms. Parents and other relatives, teachers, colleagues, community members and healthcare professionals are an essential part of the evaluation process as informers, together with children. This study is based on gathered data about the north zone of Portugal, through the ASEBA battery, with emphasis on agreements and discrepancies between informers during school period. Three instruments were chosen in order to perform this analysis: Child Behavior Checklist for ages 6-18 (CBCL), Teacher Report Form (TRF) e Youth Self- Report (YSR). We used the IBM® Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS®) software suite, more specifically its Statistics tool, to carry out the required statistical analysis. This software allowed us to explore the huge amount of available data under the established time constrains, as well as apply the appropriate statistical algorithms for pattern detection, capable of answering this study’s presented questions. Obtained results allowed us to validate the formulated hypotheses and simultaneously define guidance lines for obtaining new conclusions through future exploratory work. The strong correlations, detected both internally in each evaluation instrument and between informers, as well as the externalization and internalization differences provided by teenagers, have shown the advantages of statistical analysis to further consolidate stated hypotheses and use a considerable number of information sources in order to detect psychopathological factors

Date of Award	2013
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Pedro Dias (Supervisor)