The construct validity of the Devereux Elementary School Behavior Rating Scale (Spivack & Swift, 1967) was investigated for a sample of 408 children enrolled in the 15 kindergarten classes of a suburban school system. The 9 teachers completed behavioral ratings for the children in their classes during 1 wk. in May, 1974. A principal-factor solution was obtained on intercorrelations among the 47 behaviors included in the Devereux scale and the factors thus obtained were rotated to Varimax criterion. The results were generally positive in that 9 of the 11 behavioral dimensions described by Spivack and Swift (1967) were evident in the factor structure. Yet, there were enough differences to suggest the possibility of modifying the Devereux score categories somewhat for use with suburban kindergarten children. For example, the three individual items did not remain distinct and two dimensions did not emerge as factors. Also, the items loading the 9 factors were not always exactly the same as those which the authors specified for the corresponding behavioral dimensions.
