Cross informant agreement of the Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale-2nd edition (BERS-2) parent and youth rating scales

Behavior rating scales are important tools in the process of assessing students' emotional and behavioral needs. Best practices in behavioral assessment dictate that the perspectives of multiple informants (e.g., teacher, parent, youth) should be considered. Overall, agreement between multiple informants is modest at best and is especially low between adult and youth respondents. Low cross-informant agreement has primarily been determined with behavior rating scales that are deficit-based; the scales almost exclusively measure behavior deficits and pathologies. Recently developed strength-based instruments examine the students' behavioral and emotional strengths and competencies. Cross-informant agreement, however, has not been examined with most strength-based scales. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the cross-informant agreement between parents and youth on the Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale-2 (BERS-2), a standardized instrument that assesses children's emotional and behavioral strengths. The results of this study suggest that the BERS-2 possesses moderate to high cross-informant agreement with coefficients ranging from .50 to .63.