How Early Is Too Early? Identification of Elevated, Persistent Problem Behavior in Childhood

We inquire how early in childhood children most at risk for problematic patterns of internalizing and externalizing behaviors can be accurately classified. Yearly measures of anxiety/depressive symptoms and aggressive behaviors (ages 6–13; n  = 334), respectively, are used to identify behavioral tra...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Prevention science 2020-05, Vol.21 (4), p.445-455
Main Authors: Augustyn, Megan Bears, Loughran, Thomas, Philippi, Pilar Larroulet, Thornberry, Terence P., Henry, Kimberly L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accumulation
Adolescent
Age
Age Factors
Age of Onset
Aggressiveness
Anxiety
Behavior
Behavior problems
Child
Child and School Psychology
Child Behavior Disorders - classification
Child Behavior Disorders - physiopathology
Child Behavior Disorders - prevention & control
Childhood
Classification
Classified information
Early childhood education
False positive results
Health Psychology
High risk
Humans
Internalization
Intervention
Interviews as Topic
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Mental depression
Prevention
Prevention programs
Public Health
Qualitative Research
Risk
Risk Assessment
Risk behavior
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Summary:We inquire how early in childhood children most at risk for problematic patterns of internalizing and externalizing behaviors can be accurately classified. Yearly measures of anxiety/depressive symptoms and aggressive behaviors (ages 6–13; n  = 334), respectively, are used to identify behavioral trajectories. We then assess the degree to which limited spans of yearly information allow for the correct classification into the elevated, persistent pattern of the problem behavior, identified theoretically and empirically as high-risk and most in need of intervention. The true positive rate (sensitivity) is below 70% for anxiety/depressive symptoms and aggressive behaviors using behavioral information through ages 6 and 7. Conversely, by age 9, over 90% of the high-risk individuals are correctly classified (i.e., sensitivity) for anxiety/depressive symptoms, but this threshold is not met until age 12 for aggressive behaviors. Notably, the false positive rate of classification for both high-risk problem behaviors is consistently low using each limited age span of data (
ISSN:1389-4986
1573-6695
DOI:10.1007/s11121-019-01060-y