Development and reliability of a pictorial mental disorders screen for young adolescents.
OBJECTIVE
To report psychometric data from preliminary studies of the Adolescent Dominic (AD), a pictorial screen for the most frequent Axis I youth mental disorders.


METHODS
We created 113 picture items based on DSM-III-R diagnostic criteria and assessed them for comprehension (sample 1, n = 114; sample 2, n = 40) and reliability (sample 3, n = 128) in a group of adolescents aged 12 to 16 years living in the community. We used the kappa statistic to estimate test-retest reliability of symptoms, criteria and diagnoses, and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) for symptom and criterion scores. We assessed internal consistency of symptom scores with the alpha coefficient.


RESULTS
For symptoms, 54.4% of kappas were higher than 0.60, while only 2% were poor. ICCs for symptom scores yielded higher values (0.81 to 0.89) than for criterion scores (0.51 to 0.86). Internal consistency of symptom scores ranged from 0.52 to 0.83. Kappas for diagnoses ranged from 0.52 to 0.76.


CONCLUSIONS
Symptom reliability compared favourably with data from other assessment interviews of youth mental disorders. Following these positive results, a computerized DSM-IV version of the AD has focused on the assessment of symptoms and is currently being tested for reliability and criterion validity.
Smolla
Nicole
N
Rivière-des-Prairies Hospital, Montreal, Quebec. nicole.smolla.hrdp@SSSS.gouv.qc.ca
Valla
Jean-Pierre
JP
Bergeron
Lise
L
Berthiaume
Claude
C
St-Georges
Marie
M
D000293:Adolescent; D001154:Art; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods*; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D011581:Psychological Tests; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity