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BACKGROUND: In the United States, 9% to 15% of children experience chronic teasing and bullying that may be harmful. OBJECTIVE: The purpose was to explore teasing and bullying experiences of middle school students as part of the Child-Adolescent Teasing Scale (CATS) project. STUDY DESIGN: Seven focus groups were conducted with 11-to 14-year-old middle school students from Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Mississippi. Moderators used a semistructured interview guide to elicit views. Recorded sessions were transcribed; content analysis of verbatim accounts was used to identify sources of teasing and bullying. RESULTS: Sources of teasing and bullying were physical appearance, personal behavior, family and environment, and school relations. “Being different in any way” was the underlying theme. CONCLUSIONS: Teasing and bullying were universal and distressing, and were affected by context, frequency, and individually attributed meanings. Clinicians and school staff may use findings to identify children who might be at risk for psychological and physical harm.

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The characteristics of the KeyMath Diagnostic Arithmetic Test and the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test were examined and compared among samples of learning disabled and non-learning disabled boys. The Woodcock was found to be quite similar for both the learning disabled and the non-learning disabled samples with high reliability and a unidimensional factor structure. The KeyMath also was quite similar for the two samples. It was found to have very high reliability, although the assumption of a unidimensional math achievement was found to be less defensible for the learning disabled sample.