title: The Diagnostic Interview of Children and Adolescents for Parents of Preschool and Young Children: psychometric properties in the general population.
abstract: There is a need for reliable and well-validated diagnostic measures for studying psychopathology in preschool and young children. The goal is to study the psychometric properties of the Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents for Parents of Preschool and Young Children (DICA-PPYC) in the general population. A sample of 852 Spanish school children, aged 3 to 7 years, were randomly selected and screened for a double phase design. A total of 251 families were interviewed with the DICA-PPYC and 244 participated in a test-retest design. Different measures of psychopathology and functional impairment were also administered. Test-retest agreement with a mean interval of 8.8 days ranged from excellent to slight (kappa from 1 to 0.39) for DSM-IV-TR and from good to fair (kappa from 0.77 to 0.49) for Research Diagnostic Criteria-Preschool Age diagnoses. Attenuation between test and retest was not significant for the prevalence of diagnoses, although it was significant for the number of externalising and total symptoms in the interview. The diagnoses converged moderately with the CBCL and Dominic scores. The presence of diagnoses in the DICA-PPYC significantly differentiated preschoolers and young children who had used mental health services, were more impaired, and presented more severe psychopathology measured by dimensional scales. The DICA-PPYC is a reliable and valid semi-structured interview schedule for preschool and young children, and can serve to advance the knowledge and mental health care of this population.
authors.affiliation: Unitat d'Epidemiologia i de Diagnòstic en Psicopatologia del Desenvolupament. Departament de Psicologia Clínica i de la Salut. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra (Barcelona), Spain. lourdes.ezpeleta@uab.es
authors.forename: Lourdes
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ezpeleta
authors.forename: Núria
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: de la Osa
authors.forename: Roser
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Granero
authors.forename: Josep Maria
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Domènech
authors.forename: Wendy
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Reich
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007406:Interview, Psychological; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013030:Spain