Development and validation of a screening questionnaire for detection of adolescent psychiatric problems in primary care

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Because of many physical, psychological, and social stresses, adolescence is a vulnerable period to psychiatric disorders. But in Korea, there is actually not enough time for primary care physicians to screen such patients during ordinary medical interviews. Therefore this research was done to develop and validate a brief screening questionnaire for the detection of adolescent patients with psychiatric problems. METHODS: Three family physicians in charge of their own adolescent clinics developed a five-item questionnaire for screening adolescents with psychiatric problems by reviewing related literature with consultation by a psychiatrist. After performing a pretest and gathering second opinions from other psychiatrists and nurse-teachers, final questionnaire was redeveloped. Verification of its reliability by using test-retest method and internal consistency by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficient was done. Also inspection of its validity by comparing the scores of psychiatric patient group to normal group was done. And finally the discrimination point was obtained. RESULTS: For reliability Kappa value of new questionnaires ranged from 0.33 to 0.63. One item was dropped because of its negative influence to the internal consistency and the discrimination power. With the four final items, we estimated the validity for distinguishing psychiatric patients from the normal group by calculating the sensitivity and specificity of each cutting point of scores. For the each cutting point 1, 2, and 3, sensitivity was 85%, 75%, 40%, respectively, and specificity was 27%, 62%, 84%, respectively. We considered score 1 as the best cutting point because the purpose of the questionnaire was screening rather than diagnosis. CONCLUSION: A brief four-item screening questionnaire(SAPPO. Screening method of Adolescent Psychiatric Problems in Outpatient clinic) was developed and its reliability and validity was estimated.