The DAWBA questionnaire for teachers of 2-17 year olds
This page provides an overview of the DAWBA teacher questionnaire. If
you want to see or download the interview in English or translation,
click here.
The teacher questionnaire has three main sections, each taking up one
page:
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The emotional disorders section covers nine common symptoms of
anxiety and depression, and also asks whether there are any other
emotional difficulties, with space to describe these. An earlier
version of the DAWBA asked teachers about a much larger number of
emotional symptoms, but this did not turn out to be of great value -
teachers generally reported few symptoms even when the child had a
definite emotional disorder according to parent or self report.
-
The hyperactivity-inattention section covers all the inattentive,
impulsive and hyperactive behaviours included in the ICD-10 and DSM-IV
diagnostic criteria. Teachers are also asked to report how long children
typically persist with tasks that they enjoy and are good at - useful
for many reasons, including as a check on whether the teacher is a
particularly lenient or strict rater of inattentiveness.
-
The oppositional-conduct section asks about those behaviours
relevant to an ICD-10 or DSM-IV diagnosis, omitting only those that
are unlikely to be known to teachers , e.g. staying out late without
permission.
When teachers do report definite symptoms in any of these three areas,
they are asked to reply to supplementary questions on the impact of
these problems on the child's life. These domain-specific impact
questions cover resultant distress and interference with learning and
peer relationships.
The final page of the questionnaire has a few additional questions
covering excessive dieting or slimming, tics, and any other concerns.
For studies that do not have any other measures of generalised and
specific learning difficulties, it can be helpful to ask teachers
about the child's mental age and any marked problems in specific
curriculum areas. The clinical raters can use this information when
judging, for example, whether or not the reported attention span is
in line with the child's chronological and mental age.
Last modified : 05/09/09