Kamphaus Receives $941,000 Grant to Develop Method to Screen Children for Behavioral, Emotional Problems  

Children are routinely tested in today's public school systems for academic problems and sensory limitations in order to place them in the appropriate grade in which they may make optimum use of their learning abilities.

Now, a University of Georgia educational psychologist plans to develop a method that will make it practical to screen children for behavioral and emotional problems that can affect learning as well.

Randy Kamphaus, a Distinguished Research Professor in the College of Education, has been awarded a $941,000 grant from the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education to develop an instrument to assess children from kindergarten to 5th grade.

Kamphaus will work with a large group of elementary school teachers in northeast Georgia to develop a user-friendly, school-based screening measurement tool to assess children's emotional and behavioral health.

“Currently, schools screen for vision, hearing, academic and other problems, but they do not screen for behavioral or emotional problems in systematic, reliable and valid ways,” said Kamphaus, who is head of the department of educational psychology and instructional technology.

The grant titled, Development and Validation of a Screener for Behavioral and Emotional Problems in Elementary and Middle School, will allow Kamphaus and Christine DiStefano, co-investigator on the grant and a UGA alumna who is now a faculty member at the University of South Carolina, to develop a reliable measurement tool that schools can use to identify children who have tendencies to be more emotionally unstable or exhibit behavior problems that may inhibit learning.

The study will also be one of the few of its kind to assess the ability of such a measure to accurately predict a variety of important child outcomes long term, such as reading and mathematics achievement and mental health disorders.

Past research indicates that children with certain behavioral and emotional problems are more prone to academic failure, said Kamphaus. A new measurement tool will allow teachers to identify such problems at earlier stages in childhood, when prevention and early intervention efforts may be most effective.

“Our hope is that a more valid and practical screening method will encourage schools and parents to identify and intervene early to mitigate the effects of behavioral and emotional problems on children's academic achievement,” he said.

Currently, there is not a user-friendly, cost-effective, time-efficient, reliable and valid instrument to screen children's behavioral and emotional well-being. However, pilot research has shown that such technology is feasible, said Kamphaus. He will begin work on the project this spring.

For more than two decades, Kamphaus has pursued research in mental health screening, classification methods, differential diagnosis, test development, learning disability and ADHD assessment.

He is widely known for development of the Behavior Assessment System for Children (BAASC), a testing and assessment instrument, now used worldwide to help educators address effective child learning and behavior.

Kamphaus also has authored or co-authored several texts that have become standards for academics and practitioners in school and clinical psychology, psychological evaluation and tests/measurement training.

His books include Clinical Assessment of Child and Adolescent Intelligence and Clinical Assessment of Child and Adolescent Personality and Behavior (with Paul Frick), and psychological tests including the Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC; with Cecil Reynolds).

Kamphaus has served as principal investigator, co-investigator or consultant on several federally funded research projects dealing with early intervention and prevention, child classification methods, prevalence of ADHD and conduct disorder in Latin America , and violence prevention in schools.

He is a licensed psychologist and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA). He has served as president of the Division of School Psychology for APA and currently serves on the Council of Representatives of APA.

Kamphaus, who earned his Ph.D. in educational psychology at UGA, joined the faculty here in 1986.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Writer: Angela Hains, 706/542-5889, anicole7@uga.edu
Contact: Randy Kamphaus, 706/542-4110, rkamp@uga.edu