Development of Parental Screening Questionnaire for Hidden Youth

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: The definition of a hidden youth is a young person who has completely withdrawn from society and shut himself or herself away for more than 3 months. Those pathologically-withdrawn youths have become a burden not only to society but also to the family. However, screening of these hidden youths cannot be done easily. This study focused on developing a primary effective screening tool for these hidden youths. METHODS: The 42 participants of this study were parents of hidden youths that are between 8 to 25 years old. They were selected from from mental health centers and psychiatric clinics around Seoul and Gyeonggi Province. We also recruited 239 parents of middle and high school students in the Seoul metropolitan area for a control group. In order to decide the concurrent validity of this questionnaire, we used the Symptom Checklist-90-Revision, Children's Depression Inventory, Beck Depression Inven-tory, Social Anxiety Scale for Children-Revised, Social Anxiety and Distress Scale, Avoidant Personality Disorder Scale, and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children. SPSS version 12.0 was used for statistical analysis. RESULTS: Cronbach's alpha values, the reliability coefficient to represent internal consistency, were between 0.396 and 0.935, which showed relatively high internal consistency for this questionnaire. The test-retest coefficient was between 0.68 and 0.78, which was a statistically significant result. In a factor analysis, 4 factors such as avoidance, withdrawal, isolation, and apathy were extracted. In a concurrent validity test with SCL-90-R, the isolation factor showed a statistically-significant relationship with a phobic-anxiety sub-scale, and avoidance and withdrawal sub-scales were remarkably correlated with the interpersonal sensitivity sub-scale. CONCLUSION: Since the questionnaire for socially withdrawn youths has achieved statistically-satisfactory reliability and validity, it will be a useful method to screen for hidden youths in educational, community, and clinical settings.