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BMC Psychiatry
Published in: BMC Psychiatry 1/2020

Open Access 01-12-2020 | Anxiety or Fear-Related Disorders | Research article

A psychometric evaluation of the interRAI Child and Youth Mental Health instruments (ChYMH) anxiety scale in children with and without developmental disabilities

Authors: S. L. Stewart, S. E. Babcock, Y. Li, H. P. Dave

Published in: BMC Psychiatry | Issue 1/2020

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Abstract

Background

With 10 to 20% of Canadian children suffering with mental illness, the importance of early identification and accurate assessment systems is clear. Unfortunately, many do not receive the mental health treatment necessary and wait-times for assessment can span up to a year. In response, the interRAI suite of assessments were designed to comprehensively assess early signs of mental health impairments in children from birth to 18 years.

Methods

This study assesses the psychometric properties of the Anxiety Scale and addresses the identification of anxiety within children diagnosed with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD); a commonly underrepresented sample in mental health psychometric studies. Data was collected from children aged 4–18 years in three different samples.

Results

Results indicated reliable internal consistency and factor structure, as well as moderate-to-strong convergent validity.

Conclusions

We conclude that the Anxiety Scale exhibits psychometric qualities which demonstrate its clinical utility for use within a child sample, as well as in children with IDD. The findings provide support to a larger body of research which show consistent psychometric rigour of the interRAI measures.
Footnotes
1
Please note: Many children seeking services at mental health agencies do not receive a diagnosis (e.g, do not meet the criteria or do not have access to health care professionals able to diagnose); therefore, in those cases, no DSM data could be captured and subsequently, is reflected in Tables 1 and 2.
 
2
The sensitivity and specificity were calculated at 1-point increment starting from 0.5 in the ROC analysis (i.e., when the Anxiety score was 0.5, 1.5, 2.5, etc.). Pythagorean’s Index was calculated based on each set of sensitivity and specificity. As the actual score on the Anxiety Scale can only be integers, we chose the integer that was 0.5 point below the one associated with the highest Pythagorean’s Index score as our cut-off point. We therefore report the sensitivity and specificity as ranges, with the values associated with the closest points to the cut-off score as the upper and lower bounds of the ranges.
 
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Metadata
Title
A psychometric evaluation of the interRAI Child and Youth Mental Health instruments (ChYMH) anxiety scale in children with and without developmental disabilities
Authors
S. L. Stewart
S. E. Babcock
Y. Li
H. P. Dave
Publication date
01-12-2020
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
BMC Psychiatry / Issue 1/2020
Electronic ISSN: 1471-244X
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-020-02785-9

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