Stability of children's behavior problems: A 312-year longitudinal study☆

Abstract This study examined the stability of behavior problems in a population of 81 boys and 83 girls from first through fourth grades. For a 6-month interval, the correlations for Conduct, Anxiety-Withdrawal, and Distractibility-Hyperactivity ranged from .60 to .80. For 1-year intervals, the correlations ranged from .34 to .68. The stability of Conduct and Distractibility (which did not differ) was significantly greater than the stability of Anxiety-Withdrawal. Despite moderate to high stability coefficients, classifications (≥ 1.5 SD above the mean) of individual children lacked consistency across rating periods. There were no sex differences in behavior problem stability. Finally, there was significant “drift” in behavior rating scores across time with the direction of drift depending upon the grade of the initial rating as well as the time interval between ratings.