The Rutter Children’s Behavior Questionnaire

The Rutter Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (Rutter, 1967) which was completed by teachers in a 26-items survey designed to evaluate children’s behavior at school. Answers were rated on a scale of 0 to 2. Higher ratings indicate more severe presence of the symptoms. Possible total rate on the scale ranged from 0 to 52. The Persian version of Yousefi (1998) was used in this study. The validity and reliability of this questionnaire were reported as%66 and %90, respectively [9].

Data analysis

Data were expressed as mean ± standard deviation (SD) and percentages. Statistical tests such as ANOVA were used to compare 2 groups (case and control). All statistical analyses were done using SPSS software (SPSS version 16.0). P value <0.05 was considered significant.

Results

Table-1 demonstrates the descriptive statistics of groups in pre-test, post-test and follow–up. Statistical analysis showed that there were significant differences between control and case groups in post-test for both boys and girls groups (P<0.001).

In order to investigate the stability of training, the statistical difference between control and case groups in follow-up and pre-test was measured as well, which was considerable in both boys and girls groups (P<0.001).

Discussion

During past decades up to now, child upbringing has been one of the most important concerns in parents’ life. The need to have necessary skills to solve children’s behavioral problems is obvious in all cultures [3,4,10]. Thus, it is an important task for all the persons participating in children’s education to provide appropriate condition for parents to pull through. Nowadays, life skills training, as the skills that provide mental wellbeing, are of important necessities [11]. Considering this, the mothers will have considerable assistance in prevention, control, and treatment of their children’s behavioral problems.

Previous studies showed that relatively low levels of mother’s life skills would predict high levels of children’s behavioral problems [2,12,13]. Additionally, it was expected that the training of parents can decrease children`s behavioral problems [5,6,14,15]. So, in this research the effectiveness of life skills training on mothers of children with behavioral problems was studied. Roline and Daryl showed that aggressive children in elementary schools had low self-control and higher aggressive temperament in comparison with their similar aged kids, and life skills training (especially social skills) can be assumed as effective interventions to decrease their behavioral problems [14,15]. Another study revealed that parents’ behavior can be effective on children’s self-concept. The parents with high acceptance level, create higher self-esteem and emotional security in their children [13,16]. Esmaili et al also showed parental training effects on decrease of behavioral problems in adolescent girls [17]. In one study, Gonzalez and colleagues performed life skills program on 15 children with behavioral problems. In this program, they tried to use self-control, respect, group partnership, and legality strategies and the result showed that continuous and ongoing training of life skills can increase children’s adjustment [18]. Botvin and Griffin in 1993 discussed about teaching life skills as a program for the first time, and the universal wellbeing organization arranged this training program in order to prevent and increase the mental wellbeing level of people and set it in 5 groups including: 1) self-knowledge, empathy, 2) relation, interpersonal relationships, 3) decision making, problem solving, 4) creative thinking, criticism thinking and 5) making control to emotions and opposition to stress [19]. Previous works investigated the effects of life skills training on decreasing the mental stress of mental retarded children’s mothers; the results have showed that these skills were effective in decreasing the mental stress level of this group[20,21].

The results of the present study also declared that mothers’ life skills trainings are effective on children’s’ behavioral problems. It demonstrated that life skills training has positive effect on mothers’ knowledge which helps them to confront and behave their children regarding to their behavioral problems. The stability of effective training was confirmed at follow-up stage. It was shown that training methods are effective and the participants did not put them behind after time passing. It may be due to mothers’ tendencies to apply such trainings in order to handle their children. Overall, regular life skills training programs are suggested for parents especially at elementary schools.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful of Isfahan educational system staff for their enthusiastic support. Authors also wanted to thank the scientific writing committee of SadraTech™ Intelligent Research Developers Company for improving the English and scientific structure of the manuscript.

Conflicts Of Interest

None