1
Once: 1.5
Twice plus: 10.
4 Assessing and Treating Children’s Problems
Case Study: Functional Analysis of Children’s Behavior
Functional analysis is an assessment method in which professionals identify the antecedents and consequences of children’s behavior problems. For each of these scenarios, explain how you might perform a functional analysis of behavior. Specifically, answer the following questions:
©iStockphoto.com/mandygodbehear
How might you operationally define the behavior problem?
What might be an antecedent of the behavior? How might this antecedent elicit the behavior?
What might be a consequence of the behavior? How might this consequence reinforce the behavior and maintain it over time?
How might you intervene, either by altering the antecedent or consequence of the behavior?
1 You are a psychologist working in an elementary school. You have been asked by one of the teachers at the school to deal with a fifth-grade student who bullies other children. The teacher says the child’s behavior is getting worse and she is growing very frustrated with him.
2 You are a therapist assigned to work with an extremely shy 7-year-old girl. She refuses to go to school because she fears criticism from her teacher and classmates. She has no friends and only seems comfortable at home.
3 Your client is a 34-year-old woman with a disrespectful son. The boy never does what she says, deliberately defies her, throws tantrums, and ignores her commands. She reports considerable stress in her role as a mother. She loves her son but doesn’t enjoy spending time with him.
4 Your client is an 8-year-old boy with autism spectrum disorder and below-average intellectual functioning. He attends a regular second-grade classroom with help from an aide. Several times each hour, the boy engages in stereotypies: rocking back and forth and flapping his arms. His stereotyped behaviors are disruptive and distract his classmates during lessons.
5 Your teenage client reports problems with depression that have lasted approximately 4 months. She feels sad and lethargic most of the time, has dropped out of her favorite activities like the school pep and jazz bands, has a hard time getting out of bed in the morning, and can’t concentrate on her schoolwork. She wants antidepressant medication and is furious when she finds out that you can’t prescribe it because you’re a psychologist and not a “real doctor.”
6 You are a family therapist. One of your clients is a couple who has been married for 6 years. They have two young children. The wife complains that her husband doesn’t listen to her or appreciate her. The husband complains that his wife is emotionally distant and frigid. They each say that the other one is argumentative. They are seeing you as a last-ditch effort before divorce.
This case study accompanies the textbook: Weis, R. (2021). Introduction to abnormal child and adolescent psychology (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Answers appear in the online instructor resources. Visit https://sagepub.com.
Case Study: What Makes a Good Psychological Test?
The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) is one of the most widely used and well-validated measures of anxiety for children and adolescents (Birmaher et al., 1997). The current version of the SCARED is a questionnaire that assesses all of the major DSM-5 anxiety disorders, obsessive–compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and school refusal (Bodden, Bögels, & Muris, 2009). It can be administered to parents or youths aged 8 to 18 years. Here are some sample items (and the disorder they measure):
©iStockphoto.com/bmcent1
When frightened, I feel dizzy … (panic disorder)
I worry about the future … (generalized anxiety disorder)
I don’t like being away from my family … (separation anxiety disorder)
It’s hard for me to talk with people I don’t know … (social phobia)
I’m scared to go to school … (school refusal)
Let’s imagine that it’s 1997 and we have been asked to evaluate the reliability and validity of the SCARED. The Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys are playing on a CD in the background and we’re ready to get to work!
Discussion Questions
1 The developers of the SCARED wanted to create a brief questionnaire that might identify children at risk for anxiety and related disorders. At that time, there were already several structured interviews that clinicians could use to identify anxiety disorders in children. Why did the researchers want to create a questionnaire, too?
2 The SCARED is a questionnaire that can be administered to both parents and children separately. Why was it important for the test’s authors to develop a screening instrument that could be administered to both adults and children?
3 The SCARED is a norm-referenced test. What does it mean when we say that a test is “norm-referenced?” If we wanted to create the SCARED as a norm-referenced test, what would we need to do?
4 How might we assess the test-retest reliability of the SCARED?
5 How might we assess the internal consistency of the SCARED?
6 What is validity? Can a test be valid without being reliable?
7 How might we assess the content validity of the SCARED?
8 How might we assess the construct validity of the SCARED?
9 How might we assess the criterion-related validity of the SCARED?
References
Birmaher, B., Khetarpal, S., Brent, D., Cully, M., Balach, L., Kaufman, J., & Neer, S. M. (1997). The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED): Scale construction and psychometric characteristics. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 36, 545–553.
Bodden, D. H., Bögels, S. M., & Muris, P. (2009). The diagnostic utility of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders-71 (SCARED-71). Behavior Research and Therapy, 47, 418–425.
This case study accompanies the textbook: Weis, R. (2021). Introduction to abnormal child and adolescent psychology (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Answers appear in the online instructor resources. Visit https://sagepub.com.
Case Study: Val Revised: Applying the Systems of Psychotherapy
