The ABCs of Bullying
Addressing, Blocking, and Curbing School Aggression
Assessment/Screening
Nearly every student encounters distractions in the home or in the peer group that can make learning difficult. Some students, however, face more serious barriers on a daily basis that may prevent them from learning, interacting with peers, and growing emotionally. Being a victim of bullying falls under this category.
School staff and mental health professionals are confronted with children daily who are doing poorly in school as a result of emotional and/or psychosocial problems. To provide an environment in which students can learn and succeed, school professionals need effective tools to assess the nature of the problems and resources for change.ref This module discusses assessment and screening of general behavioral and/or emotional problems, as well as those directly related to bullying behavior.
Professionals should consider a number of clinical issues with children and adolescents before addressing and diagnosing children.
Definitions
Assessment is a broad-based concept that includes diagnosis, screening, and diagnostic testing. In practice, the overall aim of assessment is to collect information about the client and make judgments as an aid to decisionmaking.
The judgments may refer to what happened in the past (what caused the problem), the present (how severe is the problem), or the future (how the problem may improve with a certain intervention). There is some controversy in the field regarding the approaches used in assessment because even when objective data are used, decisions often are made subjectively.ref However, assessment still remains an important step in beginning to identify a student's problem.
Because young children do not always fall neatly into specific mental health categories, mental health professionals need specialized skills and training to do the assessment. The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) promotes early childhood assessment practices that are:
- Developmentally appropriate, ecological, comprehensive, skills based, and family focused.
- Conducted by a multidisciplinary team.
- Linked to intervention strategies designed for young children, rather than to categorical classification.
- Based on comprehensive, educational and/or behavioral concerns, rather than isolated deficits identified by individual assessment.
- Nondiscriminatory in terms of gender, ethnicity, native language, family composition, and/or socioeconomic status.
- Technically adequate and validated for the purpose(s) for which they are used, including the provision of norms for minority children and children with physical disabilities.ref
Functions of Assessment
The major purposes of assessment can be grouped into four functional categories. These include:ref
- Identification. Data are used to help find and label the focus of interest. This focus may be a child's problem or behavior, as well as a particular strength.
- Selection. Data are used to help make decisions about general changes in status. These changes usually revolve around decisions about the general nature and form of intervention needed (e.g., educational, psychological, or medically necessary treatments).
- Planning for specific change. Data are used to determine immediate and short-term objectives and procedures for accomplishing long-term goals. Examples are specific plans or prescriptions for a given day's intervention.
- Evaluation of intervention. Data are used to decide whether the intervention was effective based on positive and negative outcomes.
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Last Updated: 5/19/04
SAMHSA is an Agency of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
