Assessment of preschool psychopathology in Serbia

• Parents and teachers assess psychopathology in preschool children in Serbia.
• The degree of agreement between parents’ and teachers’ ratings was relatively low.
• Overall prevalence of mental health problems found in this study was 11.3%.
• According to teachers, Serbian and U.S. preschoolers are very similar.
• We provide normative data about Serbian children.

The utility of the Child Behavior Checklist for Ages 1.5–5 (CBCL/1.5–5) and the Caregiver-Teacher Report Form (C-TRF) to the Serbian children is largely unknown and has not been studied. An aim of this study was to examine rates and distribution of emotional and behavioral problems among 4 to 6-year-old children in the Serbia. Country differences between our Serbian sample and the original U.S. sample, gender differences, and cross-informant agreement between teachers and parents were also to be examined. The CBCL/1.5–5 and the C-TRF was completed by parents and teachers respectively on 512 preschoolers in the city of Novi Sad, Serbia. Internal consistency of the scales was analyzed using Cronbach alpha (α). The comparison of behavioral/emotional syndromes raw scores was performed by t test. CBCL/1.5–5 prevalence rate of the Total Problems score in the clinical range was 13.4%, while the C-TRF prevalence rate for girls was 9.8% and for boys 8.8%. Our findings revealed that parent reported more problems than teachers on almost all scales across gender with the mean cross-informant correlation of 0.24. This study documents gender differences, with boys scoring significantly higher than girls on all externalizing related problem scales on both questionnaires, but with no gender differences on internalizing problems on either questionnaire. Results support the applicability of the Serbian version of the CBCL/1.5–5 and C-TRF and can be recommended for use in clinical and research settings.