Parent and teacher ratings of Mexican American children?s behavior on the BAS : influence of acculturation on a Texas sample

摘要

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of acculturation on the parent andteacher ratings of non-clinical Mexican American children's behavior, using the BASCParent Rating Scale-C (PRS-C ) and the Teacher Rating Scale-C (TRS-C ). Onehundred twenty-three children of Mexican descent (ages 6-11) attending Texas publicschools were rated by their parents and teachers. Parent acculturation level wasmeasured using the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans-II. Parents wereassigned to High, Medium or Low acculturation groups based on a combination of linearacculturation levels (Part 1) and obtained typologies (Part 2). Parent acculturation levelwas then assigned to TRS-C data creating matched-rater pairs (PRS-C and TRS-C ofsame child) for use in this study.Internal consistency reliabilities for the Total Mexican American sample's TeacherRating Scale-C (TRS-C) were more similar to the published BASC general norms thanthe Total Mexican American sample's Parent Rating Scale-C (PRS-C ) on six of thenine clinical scales investigated and on all three of the shared adaptive scales. The moststriking internal consistency result emerged when the sample was subdivided by acculturation, the High acculturation TRS-C Conduct Problems scale showed nocohesion of items for this sample (.00). Comparison of the Total, High, Medium, andLow groups' obtained distributions on each of the 16 selected scales of the PRS-C andTRS-C to the published BASC general norms revealed: 1) six significant differences ofpotential clinical relevance on the PRS-C scales, and 2) thirteen significant differences ofpotential clinical relevance on the TRS-C scales. Both parents and teachers rated thechildren as demonstrating less maladaptive symptoms on the Aggression, Depression,Hyperactivity, and Behavioral Symptom Index. Only parents reported lowerAdaptability and Adaptive Skills scores. And only teachers of the High acculturationgroup reported higher Adaptability scores. No systematic influence of acculturation waspresent among any of the 16 selected scales. However, the parents and teachers of theHigh acculturation subgroup did have more moderate correlations than the Medium andLow groups combined.