Authors:
Paul LeBuffe and Jack Naglieri
Publisher:
Kaplan Press
(800) 334-2014
www.kaplanco.com
Initial Material Cost:
$200
Representativeness of Norming Sample:
Two non-randomly selected samples of preschool children ages
2 through 5 from 28 states that closely represent the 1995
U.S. population on such important characteristics as age,
gender, geographical region, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic
status. One sample of 2,000 children was used to norm the
protective scale and the other sample of 1,108 children was
used to norm the behavioral problem scale.
Languages:
English; Spanish (Record Form only) |
Type of
Assessment:
Observation
Age Range and Administration Interval:
2 to 5 years, interval not prescribed, but there should be
at least a four-week interval between assessments by the same
adult.
Personnel, Training, Administration,
and Scoring Requirements:
DECA raters need to be able to complete all of the items on
the assessment and need to have observed the child’s
behavior for a minimum of two hours per day, two days each
week, over a period of four weeks. Raters can include parents
or other family members, as well as teachers, and should be
able to read at the sixth-grade level. DECA users administer
the DECA and interpret the scores. They should be trained
to interpret and use standardized assessment instruments,
standardized scores, and profiles. They should know how to
use and communicate results to family members and service
providers. Users often include program directors, lead teachers,
preschool mental health or educational consultants, and early
childhood special educators.
Summary
Initial Material Cost: 2 ($100 to $200)
Reliability: 2 (internal consistency .65 or higher; test-retest
.65 or higher; inter-rater mostly |.65).
Validity: 1 (criterion validity, using contrasted groups approach,
is significant, but correlation coefficients not reported.)
Norming Sample Characteristics: 3 (normed within past 15 years,
nationally representative).
Ease of Administration and Scoring: 3 (administered and scored
by a highly trained individual). |
Description: The DECA is a 37-item
rating scale designed to evaluate self-protecting factors
and behavioral concerns among preschool children ages 2 to
5. A 27-item Total Protective Factors scale that assesses
self-protective factors represents a compilation of three
subscales: Initiative, Self-control, and Attachment. In addition,
a 10-item Behavioral Concern scale assesses challenging and
problem behaviors that children may exhibit. Family members
or early care and education professionals who have observed
the focal child’s behavior over a period of at least
four weeks can complete the DECA, which yields raw scores,
percentile scores, T-scores, normal curve equivalent scores,
and individual profiles.
Uses of Information: The DECA
is used to (1) develop an individual profile to identify strengths
and weakness of self-protective factors in order to develop
strategies to strengthen these abilities to reduce behavioral
problems of pre-school children; (2) develop a classroom profile
that identifies the relative strengths of all children in
a classroom in order that classroom strategies might be implemented
to build upon strengths and promote healthy social and emotional
child development; (3) identify children with behavioral problems
through the Behavioral Concerns Scale so that interventions
can be made before behavioral disorders develop; (4) help
Head Start programs to meet Program Performance Standards;
(5) assist early childhood programs in building on children’s
strengths to promote healthy child development; (6) provide
programs with an outcome measure that can be compared over
time to evaluate the effectiveness of prevention and intervention
strategies; (7) compare scores between different raters for
the same child to explore any differences that might exist
in a child’s behavior across different environments;
and (8) provide a measure of self-protective factors in preschool
children that can be used for research purposes.
Reliability: (1) Internal consistency
(Cronbach’s alpha): total protective factors scale alpha
is .91 (.76 to .86 for the individual protective scales) for
parent raters and .94 (.85 to .90 for the individual scales)
for teacher raters and for behavioral concerns, .71 and .80,
respectively. (2) test-retest reliability: total protective
factors scale reliability coefficient is .74 (.55 to .80 for
the individual scales) for parent raters and .94 (.87 to .91
for individual scales) for teacher raters and for behavioral
concerns, .55 and .68, respectively. (3) inter-rater reliability:
coefficients for total protective factors scale are .21 (.26
to .33 for the individual scales) pairs of teacher raters,
.69 (.57 to .77 for the individual scales) among pairs of
parent raters, and .29 (.19 to .34 for individual scales)
among pairs of parent-teacher raters. Coefficients for behavior
concerns are .44 among pairs of parents, .62 among pairs of
teachers, and .23 for pairs of parent-teacher raters.
Validity: (1) Content-related validity:
comparison to well-established measures or related research
findings not possible since DECA is the first behavior
rating scale to examine self-protective factors; however,
the items selected for the DECA were based on an extensive
review of the literature on resilience, as well as results
from focus groups with parents and teachers. Factor analysis
procedures were used to select the items for each of the
protective scales and the 10 items in the Behavioral Concerns
Scale. (2) Criterion validity: The DECA scores of a group
of pre-school children with identified emotional and behavioral
problems were found to have significantly lower protective
factor scale scores and significantly higher behavioral
concern than a matched sample of children with no identified
emotional and behavioral problems. Using the same samples,
the authors correctly predicted group members for 69 percent
of the children using the Total Protective Factor Scale
and 71 percent of the group membership using the Behavioral
Concerns Scale.
(3) Construct validity: The authors reported findings
consistent with DECA’s theoretical construct. Low-
to average-risk children with high protective factors
had the lowest behavioral concern scores, while high-risk
children with low protective factors had the highest behavioral
concern scores.
Method of Scoring: Raters complete
the Record Form by indicating the number of times they have
observed the child performing particular behaviors in the
past four months. For each item, they place a checkmark next
to one of the following descriptors: never, rarely, occasionally,
frequently, or very frequently. The checkmarks are then transferred
onto a separate page of the Record Form, where corresponding
boxes have raw score values that correspond to each rating:
never = 0, rarely = 1, occasionally = 2, frequently = 3, and
very frequently = 4. To score the DECA, examiners copy the
raw score value (0-4) from the box with its raw score to an
empty box that corresponds to the item being scored. The raw
scores for the items that comprise each of the scales are
summed to obtain the scale raw scores. The scale raw scores
for the Initiative, Self-control, and Attachment scales are
then summed to obtain the Total Protective Factors Scale Raw
Score, which does not include the Behavioral Concerns scale
raw score. The raw scores are converted into T-scores and
percentiles through the use of the Individual Profile form
or tables in the manual. The manual provides tables to help
interpret the differences between scores on the protective
sub-scales, by different raters, and over time.
Interpretability: High scores
on the Protective Factor scales indicate that a child is doing
well, while high scores on the Behavioral Concerns scale may
indicate the need for intervention. It is difficult to interpret
the meaning of raw scores, so they are converted into percentile
scores, T-scores, or normal curve equivalents. This allows
scores to be compared to ratings that children typically receive
on the scales. T-scores on the DECA range from 30 to 70, and
are classified as Below Average (30-40), Average (41-59),
or Above Average (60-70). Above Average scores on the Behavioral
Concerns scale and Below Average scores on the Total Protective
Factors scale may warrant attention. The DECA scores need
to be interpreted in the context of other information, including
DECA scores from other individuals, and the cultural and family
background.
Training Support: Training support
is available through the Devereux Foundation and includes
introduction and basic implementation sessions, as well as
a train-the-trainer session. The cost of training sessions
ranges from $550 to $1,100 plus additional fees for travel
and preparation. The following technical assistance options
are also available, upon request, through the Devereux Foundation:
(1) on-site visits with dev-ereux certified trainers who provide
one-on-one technical assistance for a cost of $500 per day
plus travel and one day of preparation; (2) video conferences
to provide refresher training; (3) telephone conferences with
DECA program developers and trainers; and (4) a web-based
listserv discussion forum.
Adaptations/Special Instructions for
Individuals with Disabilities: None described.
Report Preparation Support:
Individual and Classroom Profiles are used to graphically
display results from the DECA on all five scales. Several
examples of DECA Individual Profiles are presented and interpreted,
along with suggestions for an intervention plan.
References:
LeBuffe, Paul and Jack Naglieri. Devereux Early Childhood
Assessment: User’s Guide. Lewisville, NC: Kaplan Press,
1999.
LeBuffe, Paul and Jack Naglieri. Devereux Early Childhood
Assessment: Technical Manual. Lewisville, NC: Kaplan Press,
1999. |
