BASC-4 Behavioural and Emotional Screening System
BASC-4 BESS
The BASC-4 Behavioural and Emotional Screening System (BASC-4 BESS) is used by school districts and behavioural health professionals to efficiently assess the behavioural health of young people each year. The BESS screening forms are quick to administer and well tolerated by students, teachers and parents. They provide reliable insights into the behavioural and emotional strengths and challenges of children and adolescents from preschool through university.- Publication date:
- 2026
- Age range:
- 3:0–18:11 (Teacher and Parent Forms); 8:0–18:11 (Student Form); 18:00–25:11 (University/College Student Form)
- Reading Level:
- Parent Form—Grade 6; Student Form—Grade 2
- Scores/Interpretation:
- T scores and percentiles for a general population
- Qualification level:
- B
- Completion time:
- 5–10 minutes
- Scoring options:
- Q-global® web-based administration, scoring, and reporting.
The BASC-4 Behavioural and Emotional Screening System (BESS) incorporates the latest norms, updated items and content, and new reporting options.
The BASC-4 BESS is designed for schools, paediatric practices, behavioural health providers, communities and researchers to screen for a variety of behavioural and emotional competencies and challenges. It is an essential tool for any prevention and early intervention programme seeking to identify mental health risk early, when challenges are more easily addressed.
Benefits
- Assesses a wide array of behaviours that represent both internalising and externalising problems, as well as prosocial and interpersonal competencies that promote wellbeing.
- Features forms that can be completed in approximately 5–10 minutes without specialised training.
- Provides a Total Score on the report that is a reliable and accurate predictor of a broad range of behavioural, emotional, and academic problems.
- Includes validity indices to identify overly negative or inconsistent ratings.
Features
The BASC-4 BESS consists of brief forms that range from 25 to 30 questions and are completed by teachers, parents, or students.
- Teacher Form: Preschool (for ages 3:00–5:11) and Child/Adolescent (for Years K–12)
- Student Form: Child/Adolescent (for Years 3–12)
- Parent Form with two levels: Preschool (for ages 3:00–5:11) and Child/Adolescent (for Years K–12)
- University/College Student Form: ages 18:00–25:11
- Requires no formal training for raters and can be administered in just 5–10 minutes.
- Normed on a representative sample that closely matches recent U.S. Census population characteristics.
- Item content that is well tolerated by students, parents, and teachers as a result of use with millions of young people over the past two decades.
BESS University/College Student Form
University/College leaders are increasingly concerned about the mental health needs of their students. Students also are aware of their increasing mental health needs and look to their colleges and universities to provide support. The BESS University/College Student Form provides a quick, reliable, and confidential way for counselling centres and student health services to screen large numbers of students.
Campus-wide mental health checks using the BESS provide valuable information for addressing individual student needs and for planning prevention and promotion activities for the entire campus.
The following resources are available for BASC-4 BESS
Sample Reports
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