Cuestionario de comportamiento infantil y Adolescente. Análisis factorial exploratorio en una muestra de escolares cubanos

Abstract

Reports regarding behavior in children and adolescents in school age are useful to detect risk groups in educational as well as clinical environments. Usually, these reports are obtained from questionnaires that are impaired by non-solved methodological problems. This study explores the principal factors of the Child and Adolescent Behavior Questionnaire, an instrument previously designed to assess healthy children and adolescents through teacher reports in Cuba. A non-probabilistic sample of 6,993 children and adolescents from Centro Habana municipality was assessed: 4,991 (71.37%) were elementary school students, aged 6-12 years; 2,002 were junior high school students, aged 11-15 years; 3,528 were females (50.45%), 3,465 were males. According to an iterated principal factor analysis with varimax-normalized rotation, three factors explained 70.94% of the total variance: Behavioral Control, School Cognitive Performance, and Socialization. Possible relations between these results, psychological development, neuromaturation, and education are discussed.