The Social Adjustment of Children: The Bristol Social Adjustment Guides.

The “Bristol Social Adjustment Guides” “offer a method for detecting and diagnosing maladjustment, unsettledness or other emotional handicap in children of school age” (p. 5). The “Guides” consist of three rating scales to be marked by adults observing the child. The scales are as follows: The Child in School (boys’ and girls’ forms), the Child in Residential Care, and The Child in the Family. The scales consist of a large number of descriptive items, out of which the rater selects and underlines those that apply to the child under assessment. The rater is thus “saved the strain of composing a free verbal report.” The items describe “bits of behavior” and “primary expressions of emotion unmistakable in their meaning.” The underlined items are transferred to a Diagnostic Form, which tends to group the responses into certain areas of disturbance. According to the authors, this process contains “virtually no risk of a