Comparing Teacher and Student Report of Behavioral Risk in Predicting Elementary Student Math Outcomes

Universal screening is a promising and proactive method to detect emotional and behavioral risk in schools. To date, most of the research on screening has evaluated teacher report formats. Despite the potential benefits, there has been a general lack of research on student self-report particularly in elementary grade levels. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relative predictive ability of teacher and student report of risk on later academic outcomes. Results indicated that student self-report of risk significantly contributed to the prediction of academic outcomes even when controlling for demographic variables and in comparison to teacher report. The strength of this relationship increased from first to fifth grade. Implications and future research are discussed.