Developing Emotional and Behavior Problems Scale For the United Arab Emirates

The objective of this study was to develop a teacher s rating scale that measures emotional and behavior problems among children and adolescents consistent with the U.A.E s culture and social context with acceptable levels of validity and reliability. A total of 1560 students without disabilities, ranging in age from 4 to 19 years old (761 boys and 799 girls), and a total of 360 children with intellectual disabilities (235 boys and 125 girls) in the same age range from U.A.E participated in this study. The process of developing the scale involved the following four phases: a) domain definition, b) items development, c) investigating the content validity, d) pilot study, and e) establishing psychometric properties of the emotional and behavior problems scale (EBPS). The findings provided strong support that each domain of the EBPS have acceptable levels of content validity, structure validity, discrimination validity, internal consistency and levels of temporal stability.