•When completed questionnaires were received by mail, the stickers with the child's name were immediately removed to preserve anonymity.

•Responses on each questionnaire administered before the VRDE were entered into the Conners Rating Scale Computer Program Version 1.5 for DOS (Conners & Multi-Health Systems Inc. Staff, 1989). A standardised T-score was obtained for each of the 8 subscales as well a hyperactivity index which is the sum of 10 items of the CPRS-93. These T-scores were transferred to SPSS 8.01 for Windows and formed the basis for the analysis.

•Responses to the items of the CPRS-93 administered after the VRDE were entered into the same program.

• The program evaluated each questionnaire entry as a separate case.

•This program did not allow for missing values. Twelve parents wrote "not applicable" over the questions relating to school behaviour and performance on the second copy of the CPRS-93 since this evaluation took place during the school holidays. During the data entry for these items, the response given on the first questionnaire was entered.

•Since the data was inaccurate for the subscale, Learning Problem which most of these items comprised, and this subscale was not assessing behaviour that was relevant, reliable or informative due to the time periods during which the comparison took place, this subscale was removed from the analysis.

•Other demographic variables, including age, gender, medication status and VRDE session duration were entered into the Microsoft Access data base and transferred to the SPPS program for analysis.

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