Behavior Disorders 1981, 7, 11-17. Dimensions of Maladaptive Behavior Among Kindergarten Level Children Paul A. McDermott and Marley W. Watkins ABSTRACT Recent public and professional policy commitments have stimulated programs for early detection and classification of childhood maladjustment. Many of these programs draw behavioral observation information from classroom teachers working with children at preschool levels. Inasmuch as it may be suspected that preschool children would display patterns of maladjustment somewhat different from those associated with later childhood and adolescence, it is important to determine whether and how such differences are manifest. To this end, 173 children from a general kindergarten population were observed and rated by teachers using the Bristol Social Adjustment Guides. Principal-components fac- tor analysis with varimax rotation extracted three dimensions of maJadaptivity (i.e., general overreaction, socioemotional constriction, and unforthcomingnessj. Whereas the former dimensions are commonly manifested among children at al/ age levels, unforthcomingness is considered uniquely reflective of children's re- actions to developmental, social, and environmental transition. The prevalence and implications of these factor dimensions among kindergarten children are reported, and their relationship to other known dimensions of early childhood maladjustment is discussed. With the emergence of the national Mental Health Systems Act (Goldston, 1979; Note 1), a great deal of attention is being directed toward primary prevention of mental health and educational disorders among children. This new thrust in the commitment of resources places special emphasis upon early recognition of child maladjustment. Inasmuch as com- mon school attendance marks the first opportunity for observation and evaluation of general populations of children, systematic and nomothetic comparisons of preschool and primary school children, as provided by teachers and other educational specialists, are often the most effective and efficient means to the early identification of childhood maladjustment. The Bristol Social Adjustment Guides (BSAG) are recognized as one of the more useful methods for the timely detection and classification of children's malbehaviors by way of teachers' summative observations. The BSAG's international popularity has been en- hanced by its inclusion in the British National Child Development Study (Davis, Butler, & Goldstein, 1972) involving teachers' evaluations of over 17,000 children in the United King- dom, by its latest restandardization and extension with 2,527 Canadian elementary school children (Stott, Marston, & Neill, 1975), and by its recent application in computerized ac- tuarial decision models designed primarily for differential diagnosis of handicapped children according to American classification systems (McDermott, 1980c). The general proficiency of the BSAG in discerning children's behavioral disturbance has been established through a variety of retrospective, concurrent, and predictive criterion validity studies (Stott, 1978, 1979; Stott & Wilson, 1977). In addition, the independent factorial integrity of the BSAG's overall adjustment scales and distinct variance within its behavioral syndromes have been supported through factor analytiC investigations (Hale, 1978; McDermott, 1980b; Wilson, 1973). As commonly applied in primary prevention programs, the BSAG are used extensively as an initial screening device to discover "at risk" children at the kindergarten or comparable 11