Background: Studies about changes in the prevalence of emotional and behaviour problems across time are lacking, especially among younger children.
Aim: To determine if the level of parent-reported emotional and behaviour problems and competencies in young Norwegian school children had changed across a 16-year time interval.
Methods: We compared parent reports obtained by the Child Behavior Checklist in two samples of children aged 7-9 years from the general population assessed in 1991 and 2007.
Results: The results demonstrated overall stability or slight decreases of emotional and behaviour problems and a significant increase in competencies, mainly due to increased activity and social competence scores in the 2007 sample. Boys obtained higher scores than girls in Total Problems, Externalizing and Attention problems at both time points and there was a high stability of the rank order of items.
Conclusions: The findings suggest stability in child emotional and behaviour problems, and an increase of competencies across the period.