The University of Western Ontario, Faculty of Education, John George Althouse Building | 1137 Western Road, London, Ontario, N6G 1G7, Canada.
Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, Social Sciences Building | 1151 Richmond St, London, Ontario, N6A 3K7, Canada.
BMC Psychiatry. 2020 Jul 29;20(1):390. doi: 10.1186/s12888-020-02785-9.
With 10 to 20% of Canadian children suffering with mental illness, the importance of early identification and accurate assessment systems is clear. Unfortunately, many do not receive the mental health treatment necessary and wait-times for assessment can span up to a year. In response, the interRAI suite of assessments were designed to comprehensively assess early signs of mental health impairments in children from birth to 18 years.
This study assesses the psychometric properties of the Anxiety Scale and addresses the identification of anxiety within children diagnosed with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD); a commonly underrepresented sample in mental health psychometric studies. Data was collected from children aged 4-18 years in three different samples.
Results indicated reliable internal consistency and factor structure, as well as moderate-to-strong convergent validity.
We conclude that the Anxiety Scale exhibits psychometric qualities which demonstrate its clinical utility for use within a child sample, as well as in children with IDD. The findings provide support to a larger body of research which show consistent psychometric rigour of the interRAI measures.
加拿大有 10%至 20%的儿童患有精神疾病，因此早期识别和准确评估系统的重要性显而易见。不幸的是，许多儿童并未接受必要的心理健康治疗，评估的等待时间可能长达一年。针对这一问题，interRAI 评估套件旨在全面评估从出生到 18 岁儿童的心理健康障碍早期迹象。
本研究评估了焦虑量表的心理计量学特性，并探讨了在智力和发育障碍（ID）儿童中识别焦虑症的问题；智力和发育障碍儿童是精神健康心理计量学研究中常见的代表性不足的样本。数据来自三个不同样本中年龄在 4 至 18 岁的儿童。
结果表明该量表具有可靠的内部一致性和因子结构，以及中等至较强的聚合效度。
我们得出结论，焦虑量表具有心理计量学特性，表明其在儿童样本中具有临床应用价值，也适用于智力和发育障碍儿童。这些发现支持了更大数量的研究，这些研究显示了 interRAI 测量的一致心理计量严谨性。
