Knowing, liking, and judged problem severity in relation to referral and outcome measures in a school-based intervention program.

Teachers, as referral agents, and nonprofessional child aides, as interventionists, rated 709 kindergartners-6th graders seen in a school-based mental health program for how well they were known by teachers and child aides, how much they were liked by them, and how serious their problems were. All evaluation measures derived from 3 instruments--the AML (which measures Acting Out, Moodiness and Withdrawal, and Learning Problems), the Teacher Referral Form, and the Aide Status Evaluation Form. Several interconnected studies describe the ratings' properties and stability, how they differed across demographic groups, and how they related to indexes of referral status, termination status, and improvement. Better liked children and those seen initially as having less severe problems had healthier referral and termination profiles and were judged to have improved more in the program by both rater groups. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)