Cross-cultural validation and inter-rater reliability of the Personal and Social Performance scale, Thai version.

OBJECTIVE: To cross-culturally validate and examine the inter-rater reliability of the Personal and Social Performance scale (PSP), Thai version (Thai-PSP). MATERIAL AND METHOD: The authors translated, back translated, and conducted a panel review on the source, translated, and back translated version of the PSP. After nine psychiatrists, who were new to the PSP or the Thai-PSP had received a three-hour session of training, they jointly watched four tape-recorded interviews and used the Thai-PSP for independent rating of the patients' functioning. RESULTS: The score ranges for items 1 (socially useful activities), 2 (personal/social relationships), and 3 (self-care) were between 0 (absent) and 4 (severe). The score range was between 0 (absent) and 3 (marked) for item 4 (disturbing/aggressive behavior). The total scores of four patients were rated between 2 (21-30 points) and 8 (81-90 points). The intraclass correlation coefficients (95% confidence intervals) of each item and total score were as follows: 0.63 (0.28-0.96) for item 1, 0.75 (0.42-0.98) for item 2, 0.69 (0.35-0.97) for item 3, 0.52 (0.17-0.94) for item 4, and 0.75 (0.41-0.98) for the total score. CONCLUSION: The results of the present study confirm the reliability of PSP and Thai-PSP as well as the ease of training.

A comparison study of cognitive impairment screening tools: CDT, IQCODE VS MMSE.

Objective: To compare the Clock Drawing Test (CDT), and the Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly (IQCODE) and the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) in dementia patients. Methods: The prospective study was carried out in Srithanya hospital from April 2005 to July 2006. There were 106 patients interviewed by one psychiatric nurse. CDT developed by Royall et al (CLOX1) was selected in this study. The Thai version of MMSE was MMSE-Thai 2002. IQCODE was a 1-5 rating scale on 16 items. Pearson’s correlation and cut- off point were analyzed. Results: The age range was 53-85 years and the average age was 67.43 ± 8.2 years. Females were 60.4%. Most had a primary level of education (38.6%). There were 27 demented, 11 physical illness, 8 depression and Parkinson and 60 normal elderly cases. Means of MMSE, CLOX1 and IQCODE were 24.70 ± 4.85, 9.59 ± 4.01, 3.34 ± 0.44 respectively. Both questionnaires were significantly correlated with MMSE. The optimal cut-off point (sensitivity, specificity) of CLOX1 and IQCODE for dementia were < 8 ( 79.7, 85.2%) and ≥ 3.25 (83.5, 81.5%) respectively. Conclusion: These instruments could be used for screening cognitive impairment in clinical practice. Each tool had a different superior aspect regarding context.

Reliability and validity of the Thai version of the Health of the Nation Outcome Scales (hoNOS).

BACKGROUND: Measurement in psychiatric services is important for the development of a psychiatric tool for budget allocation. OBJECTIVE: To translate the Health of the Nation Outcome Scales (HoNOS) into Thai and to assess its psychometric properties. MATERIAL AND METHOD: The HoNOS was translated into Thai, by using the standard of "forward-backward" translation procedure. Two psychiatric nurses interviewed subjects together but independently rated their scores. The subjects were 23 acute inpatients and 23 sub-acute inpatients. The reliability and validity was assessed. RESULTS: The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the Thai HoNOS was 0.68. It had a high correlation (r > 0.80) with the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) and the Clinical Global Impression (CGI). It suggested high concurrent validity. It had a satisfactory power (p < 0.05) in discriminating overall clinical outcomes between acute and sub-acute psychiatric inpatients. CONCLUSION: The Thai HoNOS fulfils the requirements of a psychiatric outcome scale for routine use in inpatient service.

The European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer quality of life questionnaire: translation and reliability study of the Thai version.

In the past decade, increasing attention is being given to more systematic and quantitative ways to evaluate explicitly the impact of disease and medical interventions on quality of life (QOL). Pertaining to the field of oncology, two relatively new instruments--the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) QLQ-C30 and the FACT-G, have received growing attention and appear to be excellent QOL instruments in clinical settings. FACT-G has already been validated and has been used in Thailand. Thus in the present study, the English version of the EORTC quality of life questionnaire (QLQ-C30) was translated into Thai and the initial descriptive statistic and scale reliability were reported. Mean score in this study of 75 cancer patients was comparable with the original report. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for multi-item scales range from 0.64 to 0.89. The validity of this translated version will be reported at a later date. The initial findings of the present study indicate that the Thai version of the EORTC QLQ-C30 is reliable. A validating process of this version is in progress with active patients accrual ongoing at present.

Scalability of brief disability questionnaire (BDQ) Thai version.

Psychiatric disorders lead to functional disability of the affected patients. Assessment of functional disability in psychiatric patients is important for psychiatric research. The objective of this study is to test the scalability of the Brief Disability Questionnaire and its correlation with mental health status in Thai patients. Materials and Methods: The mental health status and functional disability of 879 patients attending four primary care settings were respectively assessed by two self-report questionnaires, the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and the Brief Disability Questionnaire (BDQ). The internal consistency of the BDQ was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and its scalability was ten investigated by Mokken analysis. The relationship between the score of the GHQ and the BDQ was examined by Pearson’s correlation coefficient. Results: The internal consistency of the BDQ was high with a Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of 0.82. Each item of the BDQ showed an acceptable scalability (H >=0.3). The results showed that the BDQ satisfied the criteria for a hierarchical scale. The BDQ score was significantly correlated with the score of the GHQ-12 _r=0.45, p<0.001). Conclusion: The Brief Disability Questionnaire maintains its hierarchical scalability in Thai subjects and can be used as an outcome measurement of functional disability.

Development of a short psychiatric screening questionnaire: An application of search partition analysis (SPAN) .

A short questionnaire, selecting a few items from an existing general health questionnaire is presented. A short screening questionnaire for psychiatric screening in primary care was developed. The Thai version of GHQ-60 was chosen as the source of items to be selected. A technique called search partition analysis (SPAN) was applied to the data derived from 100 patients attending a mobile community health service unit. The best subset of five items in a form of Boolean expression {(q49 > 1) or (q46 > 1) or (q55 > 0 and q1 > 1) or (q55 > 0 and q44 > 1)} was obtained. All of the validity measures except sensitivity are higher than those of the 12- and 60-item forms. The decision rule has potential for detecting psychiatric morbidity in primary care.