The first instrument of its kind to provide a standardized approach to the assessment of emotional disturbance (ED), the EDDT encompasses all the federal criteria and addresses the broad emotional and behavioral nuances of children who may require special education services for ED.
Directly addresses the federal criteria
- From the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations (2002) and the reauthorization of IDEA (2004), the federal criteria mandate that certain conditions be present in order to receive services but don’t provide assessment guidelines.
- The EDDT includes five sections that correlate with the specific components of the federal criteria, enabling you to work through each criterion one by one.
- Because the criteria specify that socially maladjusted children can’t qualify for services unless they are both socially maladjusted and emotionally disturbed, the EDDT treats social maladjustment as a supplemental trait and assesses it separately from ED.
Includes both exclusionary and inclusionary items
- Emotional Disturbance Characteristics scales include Inability to Build or Maintain Relationships, Inappropriate Behaviors or Feelings, Pervasive Mood/Depression, and Physical Symptoms or Fears.
- Screening items are included within the Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder cluster and the Possible Psychosis/Schizophrenia cluster.
- The Level of Severity cluster and the Educational Impact cluster address how emotional and behavioral problems affect students and aid in the development of recommendations and interventions.
Valid and reliable for a variety of users
- Norms are based on a sample of 601 children who were demographically matched to the U.S. population. Data were also collected on a sample of 404 children eligible for special education due to an ED diagnosis.
- Internal consistency was high (r = .94) for the EDDT Total Score and ranged from .75 to .88 for the scales. In addition, test-retest stability was high (r = .92) and interrater reliability was good (r = .84) for the EDDT Total Score.
- Convergent validity was examined using the CAB™ Teacher and Parent Forms, the BASC-2 Teacher Form, and the Teacher Report Form of the CBCL. Validity also was examined in populations of children with specific learning disabilities, speech/language impairment, mental retardation, ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, and social maladjustment.