The Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL) is designed to describe children’s emotional and behavioural competencies as well as problems (see Addendum F) (Achenbach & Ruffle, 2000). The competency scale on the CBCL measures the child’s level and quality of social functioning, social relations and activities (Achenbach & Ruffle, 2000). The CBCL forms are normally completed by both parents and teachers (Achenbach & Ruffle, 2000). However, for
52 purposes of the current study only the teacher’s version of the form was completed, as the teachers are with the children during their academic and interactive part of the day during school hours. The assessment takes approximately 10–15 minutes to complete per learner (Achenbach & Ruffle, 2000). The CBCL has 113 items which can be scored on a 3-point Likert scale where 0 means the behaviour is (not present) at all and 2 is (highly present) behaviour (Achenbach & Ruffle, 2000). A higher score is therefore an indication that the behaviour is highly present.
Achenbach and Ruffle (2000) further suggested that cut-off points will vary depending on the sample used. Lower cut-off points will be used to indicate diagnoses with less deviant
behaviour whereas higher cut-off points will indicate the opposite (Achenbach & Ruffle, 2000). The CBCL is available in more than one language (Achenbach & Ruffle, 2000). The internal consistency of the CBCL is estimated to be between 0.63 and 0.97 in community samples with test-retest reliability between 0.73 and 0.94 on the different items on the scale (Meir, Slone & Levis, 2014). Meir et al. (2014) reported pretest and posttest Cronbach’s alpha of 0.92. This was found in a population aged 8 to 12 years old (Meir, et al., 2014). Heimlich (2001) found that together with the Direct Observation Form (DOF) and Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL) for teachers the inter-rater reliability was low. However, a high consistency was found with two raters (Heimlich, 2001).
Content validity of adaptive, competent and problem item scores on the CBCL was
supported by years of research and revision, and all items discriminate significantly (p<0.01) between demographically similar non-referred and referred children (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001)
For purposes of the current study raw scores were used as it is not the aim of the study to establish the norm of each individual child’s behaviour, but rather to establish if there was change from pretest to posttest.
53 4.5 PROCEDURE
Permission was sought from the Department of Psychology at Stellenbosch University, the Research Ethics Committee (see Addendum G) and Research Ethics Committee: Animal Ethics Care and Use (see Addendum H), the Western Cape Education Department (see Addendum I), the school (see Addendum J), parents of the children (see Addendum K), assent from the children (see Addendum L), owners of the dogs (see Addendum M) and from Pets as Therapy (see Addendum B).
The parents of all 61 learners between the ages of 10 and 12 years were asked to give permission for their child to participate in the study. Of the 61 consent forms that were sent to the parents, 51 were received back. Following the consent forms, the learners were asked to complete assent forms (see Addendum K) to take part in the interventions. Of these 48 assent forms were received. The teachers of the school were asked to complete a
demographical questionnaire for each learner (see Addendum D), the MOPI (Addendum E) and the CBCL (Addendum F).
The researcher made use of an organisation called Pets as Therapy (PAT), which has volunteers and their dogs who interacted with the participants of the experimental group once a week over a period of 10 consecutive weeks. All dogs used by PAT are well trained and used to working with children in a school setting.
Prior to the commencement of the programme, all the learners were tested by the teachers who had to complete the CBCL and the MOPI questionnaires for each learner. Following the completion of the questionnaires the researcher captured the data. Thereafter the sample
54 was divided into two equal groups using the 3research randomizer program. The randomizer
program had divided, at random, the sample of 48 into two groups. The first group, the experimental group, received the intervention, whereas the second group, the control group, continued with normal everyday activities. The control group also had the PAT services available to them after the 10-week intervention programme had been completed. Both groups were tested prior to and after the intervention had taken place (see Figure 4.1).
Before the intervention programme took place the teachers were expected to complete the demographical form (see Addendum D), the MOPI (see Addendum E) and the CBCL (see Addendum F). The teachers were expected to do this for all the learners who had given assent to partake in the study and received consent from their parents. After the 10-week intervention, the same teachers that completed the questionnaires at pretesting were expected to complete the MOPI and the CBCL again for both the experimental and control group. The questionnaires (pretest and posttest) were handed to the teachers to complete at the school. It is important to note that data was collected before the intervention took place, but the researcher did not analyse any data at that point. This was done to ensure that each learner had equal chance of being in either the experimental or control group.
3 Research Randomizer is a free website program which generates random numbers and effectively divides them into groups. This computer program can effectively be used by researchers to divide their samples into randomised groups for experimental other research. More information can be found on https://www.randomizer.org/.
55 Figure 4.1. Flow diagram
Randomised (n =48)
Experimental group (n = 24)
Control group (n = 24)
10 week AAI intervention
Posttest (n = 23) Posttest (n = 24) Analyse (n = 23) Analyse (n = 24) Withdraw (n = 1) No permission (n = 3)
56 4.6 ANIMAL-ASSISTED INTERVENTION (AAI)
4.6.1 Introduction
The following animal-assisted intervention took place with the experimental group after receiving all the appropriate permissions.