Parent vs teacher Vanderbilt scores

Parent and teacher Vanderbilt scores often differ because home and school demand different things and each rater sees a different slice of the day. The gap is useful information about where a child struggles and where support is already working, not evidence that someone rated wrongly.

Quick facts

Age range: The 2002 NICHQ document does not state a numeric age range. It instructs raters to judge each behaviour against what is appropriate for the child's age, and the teacher form asks for a grade level, so it is used with school-age children.
Who completes it: A parent or caregiver, and a teacher who sees the child across the school day.
Domains measured: Inattention, Hyperactivity and impulsivity, Co-occurring behaviour items, Performance and functioning items
Form types: Parent / caregiver form, Teacher form
Questions: Parent initial form: 55 items. Teacher initial form: 43 items. The follow-up scales carry the first 18 core symptom questions plus the performance questions.
Completion time: Pending primary-source verification
Source organization: National Institute for Children's Health Quality (NICHQ)

Common reasons for a gap

Different demands: sustained independent work at school versus transitions and homework at home.

Different structure: classroom routine can mask difficulties, or amplify them.

Different reference points: a teacher compares a child to a class; a caregiver compares to siblings or to last year.

What a clinician does with the difference

A setting-specific pattern changes what is worth trying next, and it changes who needs to be part of the plan.

Collecting both views is why multi-rater measurement exists at all.

Instrument items and rights

This page describes the instrument and links to the official source. We do not reproduce the questionnaire on this site.

NICHQ makes the 2002 first edition available for free download and requests citation when it is referenced. That is not a grant of digital or commercial reproduction rights, and later-edition AAP material must not be reproduced without rights. Public pages describe and cite only.

In-product permission status: not established.

Primary sources

1. NICHQ Vanderbilt Assessment Scales (first edition, 2002) (opens in a new tab), National Institute for Children's Health Quality (NICHQ) (2002)
2. AAP ADHD toolkit / later-edition Vanderbilt materials, American Academy of Pediatrics

Author: Threaded Care editorial team

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