Intervention Summary

Destructive behavior was measured by a narrow-band scale of the Child Behavior Checklist, or CBCL, a parent/caregiver-rated questionnaire that assesses behavioral problems in young children. Items to assess 2- and 3-year olds were derived directly from the version for ages 2 to 3 and items to assess 4-year-olds were based on items from the version for ages 4 to 18 that were also included in the version for 2- to -3 year olds. Internal consistency coefficients for the Destructive Scale were reported as: Cronbach's a = 0.60 at age 2, Cronbach's a = 0.71 at age 3, Cronbach's a = 0.73 at age 4.

Positive Behavior Support from Caregivers was measured during a 2.5 hour home visit in which child and caregiver were videotaped engaging in a series of tasks that included free play, cleanup, delay of gratification, teaching, presentation of inhibition-inducing toys, and meal preparation. Parents were rated on his or her tendency to anticipate potential problems and to provide prompts or other structural changes to avoid young children becoming upset and/or involved in problem behavior. The following items were entered into positive behavior support scores: Parent Involvement; Positive Behavior Support; Engaged Parent–Child Interaction Time; and Proactive Parenting). This measure was found to have adequate reliability (interrater agreement, kappa, was .86 and percent agreement between raters was .87).

Problem behavior was measured by the Externalizing Scale of The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) for ages 1.5 – 5, or CBCL, a parent/caregiver-rated questionnaire that assesses behavioral problems in young children. This scale assesses attention problems, rule-breaking behavior, and aggressive behavior. The reliability for this scale was found to be adequate for all assessment points (Cronbach's alphas=.86, .89, and .86 at ages 2, 3, and 4, respectively).

Oppositional defiant behavior was measured using a parent-rated measure at ages 2 to 5 and a teacher-rated measure of oppositional defiant behavior at school at age 7.5. The parent-rated measure of child oppositional defiant behavior was created from the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) for ages 1.5–5 and ages 6–18, an empirically validated measure of child behavior problems. The measure was constructed using eight items from the CBCL that mapped onto DSM-IV criteria for oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and aggressive items from conduct disorder and were continuously present on the CBCL across ages 2 through 5. These items were cruelty to animals, destroys own things, destroys others' things, gets in many fights, physically attacks people, is defiant, is disobedient, and has temper tantrums. A composite ODD variable was then computed by averaging the values for these items at each assessment age. The reliability of this measure was acceptable at all four ages (Cronbach's alpha=.71 at age 2, .75 at age 3, .78 at age 4, and .80 at age 5). The teacher-rated measure to assess behavior at school was the Oppositional Defiant Problems scale from the Teacher Report Form (TRF), a well-validated and reliable measure of child problem behavior (Cronbach's alpha=.90).