Assessment

Abstract

Chapter 2 provides an overview of the recommended assessment process for youths with school refusal behavior. The purpose of formally assessing a child with school refusal behavior is to obtain answers to three critical questions: What is the behavior problem? What is maintaining school refusal behavior? and What is the best treatment for school refusal behavior? Recommended assessment methods such as interviews, child self-report measures, and parent and teacher checklists are presented. The chapter also presents descriptive procedures (such as questionnaires to initially identify variables that maintain school refusal behavior) and experimental procedures (in the form of observations to confirm the presence of these maintaining variables). Assessment forms and logbooks to record observations are provided.