A Tool for Assessing Truancy Risk among Elementary School Children: Predictive and Construct Validity of the Risk Indicator Survey I (RIS I)

Purpose: Truancy has been presented as a prevalent social problem regarding school dropout, substance abuse, gang involvement, and criminal activities (Huizinga, Loeber, Thornberry & Cothern, 2000). Based on the research of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and Loeber and Farington (1998 & 2000), early identification and intervention of childhood problems were emphasized to prevent further serious and violent offending. According to Loeber and Farington, truancy has been identified as a stepping stone of school dropout and more serious offending. Different truancy intervention programs have been implemented, but no measure had been identified as tool for assessing continuing truancy risk. To address this need, the Louisiana State Legislature and Louisiana State University School Social Work initiated a prevention and early intervention program. In 1999, the Truancy Assessment and Service Center (TASC) was developed to address the high school dropout and juvenile delinquency problems in Louisiana. The Risk Indicator Survey I was developed and has been utilized as a screening tool to measure continued truancy risk level and to provide individual intervention service needs. This tool has been used for almost decade in all of the TASC centers in Louisiana and did not have any previous validation testing. As an initial validation test, the current study examines the construct and predictive validity of RIS I.

Methods: During 2004-2005 academic years, 13,272 truancy cases were referred to TASC sites statewide and the RIS I was completed by teachers. One-half of these were randomly sampled using SPSS, yielding the final study sample of 6,239 cases (54.6% male and 45.44% female; 63.6% African American and 33.5 % Caucasian). The mean age was 8.7 (range 5-14 years old), 31.7% experienced previous grade retention (n = 1977) and 13.2% received special education (n =827). Initially, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to identify factors of the RIS I and the initial finding of the EFA was confirmed with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Finally, the predictive validity was examined by the association between the RIS I and the total number of unexcused absences at the end of school year.

Results: The original 59 items of the RIS I were reduced to 32 items on six factor subscales that accounted for 49.59% of the variance in EFA. The identified factors are conduct related problems, lack of motivation, unstable home life, social problems, self-harm, and attention problem. The test of the CFA with six factors as indicators resulted in four subscale factors (self-harm and attention problem were removed) with 29 items, suggesting that RIS I functions as a reliable and valid measure of a single construct, continued truancy risk.

Implications: These findings provide the initial validation support for the RIS I as a helpful assessment tool for continued truancy risk evaluation in truancy intervention programs. This shortened-version of the RIS I with 29 items are easy to complete by school personnel and four subscales indicating children's problem areas will make it convenient for school based practitioners who provide intervention services to identify individual service needs areas.