The teacher Vanderbilt form

The teacher Vanderbilt form asks an educator how often attention, hyperactivity and impulsivity behaviours appear in the classroom, along with academic and behavioural performance items. It captures six hours a caregiver never sees, and it informs, but never makes, a clinical decision.

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)

Why the classroom view is different

School asks for sustained attention, waiting, transitions and independent work in a room with twenty other children. Some difficulties only appear under those demands; others are masked by structure that home does not have.

Limitations

One teacher sees one part of the day. Subject, time of day, seating and support in place all shape what gets observed.

The form is an observation record. It cannot diagnose, and it should never be the only input into a decision.

What happens next

The teacher view sits beside the parent view so the provider can compare settings rather than choose between two accounts.

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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