The Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale–Third Edition (BERS-3) is a multimodal assessment system that measures the behavior from three perspectives: the student (Youth Rating Scale), parent (Parent Rating Scale), and teacher or other professional (Teacher Rating Scale). The BERS-3 measures several aspects of student strengths: Interpersonal Strength, Family Involvement, Intrapersonal Strength, School Functioning, and Affective Strength. The subscales are useful in evaluating students for prereferral services, in placing students for specialized services, and in measuring the outcome of services. The BERS-3 can identify students’ individual behavior and emotional strengths and the areas in which educational strengths need to be developed.
Earlier editions of the BERS have been widely adopted by local, state, and federal agencies to evaluate the outcomes of series and has been used in several national studies of children with and without disabilities. All of the BERS-3 scores were normed on representative samples of students with and without disabilities. Demographics of the standardization samples are reported in the manual by age, geographic region, race, Hispanic status, gender, household income, and parent educational level.
Averaged internal consistency reliabilities coefficients for the BERS-3 subscales ranged from .80 to .96 (very large to nearly perfect). The averaged coefficient for the Strengths Index ranged from .94 to .98 (nearly perfect). Interrater reliabilities for the BERS-3 subscales ranged from .58 to .80 (large to very large) for the subscales and from .85 to .90 (very large to nearly perfect) for the Strengths Index.
Twenty additional reliability and validity studies have confirmed the BERS-3 content, construct, and criterion-related validity. Criterion-prediction studies produced coefficients that were .99 (nearly perfect) for the correlations between each of the BERS-3 rating scale composites and the Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale–Second Edition Strengths Index composites. Construct–identification validity is demonstrated by including studies of subgroup performance and confirmative factor analysis of the BERS-3’s structure.
The BERS-3 Online Scoring and Report System (provided as part of the BERS-3 complete kit) is used for entering test session data; converting raw scores into scaled scores; converting the sum of scaled scores into the BERS-3 Strength Index, percentile rank and confidence intervals; comparing within form scores to identify significant differences; and obtaining a score summary and narrative report. The goals provided in the narrative report are particularly useful in the development of goals for behavior intervention plans, individualized education plans, and transition plans.
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