title: Exploring the hand test with medically ill children and adolescents.
abstract: Pediatric psychologists use the tools of assessment to evaluate the psychological functioning of youth with chronic and acute medical illnesses. This study is an exploration of the use of a performance-based measure, the Hand Test (HT; Wagner, 1983), with pediatric medical patients. A sample of medical inpatients (n = 27) and psychiatric outpatients (n = 24) were administered the HT, a self-report measure, and a parent-report behavior rating scale. Results indicate that the psychiatric group scored higher than the medical group on HT Aggression, Withdrawal, and Pathological scores. The Aggression (d = 0.90) and Pathological (d = 0.80) variables were particularly robust in differentiating between groups, but the Crippled variable did not differ between groups. Hierarchical logistic regression demonstrated the incremental validity of the HT over behavior ratings alone in the classification of clinical groups. Analyses indicated that the HT can add important information in the differentiation of medically ill children from those with psychological disturbance.
authors.affiliation: Counseling, Clinical, & School Psychology Program, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA. ssmith@education.ucsb.edu
authors.forename: Steven R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Mark A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Blais
authors.forename: Madhuri
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vangala
authors.forename: Bruce J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Masek
mesh_terms: D000208:Acute Disease / Q000523:psychology; D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000523:psychology; D004194:Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis; D009511:New England; D011386:Projective Techniques; D015203:Reproducibility of Results