PROCEDURAL VALIDITY OF THE COMPUTERIZED VERSION OF THE COMPOSITE INTERNATIONAL DIAGNOSTIC INTERVIEW (CIDI-AUTO) IN THE ANXIETY DISORDERS

The procedural validity of the computerized version of the Composite I nternational Diagnostic Interview (CIDI-Auto) was examined against the consensus diagnoses of two clinicians for six anxiety disorders (agor aphobia, panic disorder (+/-agoraphobia), social phobia, simple phobia , obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), generalized anxiety disorder (G AD) and major depressive episode (MDE)). Clinicians had available to t hem all data obtained over a 2- to 10-month period. Subjects were 98 p atients accepted for treatment at an Anxiety Disorders Clinic, thus, a ll subjects had at least one of the diagnoses being examined. While th e CIDI-Auto detected 88.2% of the clinician diagnoses, it identified t wice as many diagnoses as did the clinicians. The sensitivity of the C IDI-Auto was above 0.85 except for GAD, which had a sensitivity of 0.2 9. The specificity of the CIDI-Auto was lower (range: 0.47-0.99). The agreement between the CIDI-Auto and the clinician diagnoses, as measur ed by intraclass kappas, ranged from poor (kappa = 0.02; GAD) to excel lent (kappa = 0.81; OCD), with a fair level of agreement overall (kapp a = 0.40). Canonical correlation analysis suggested that the discrepan cies between the CIDI-Auto and clinicians were not due to different di agnostic distinctions being made. It is suggested that the CIDI-Auto m ay have a lower threshold for diagnosing anxiety disorders than do exp erienced clinicians. It is concluded that, in a sample where all subje cts have at least one anxiety disorder diagnosis, the CIDI-Auto has ac ceptable validity.