ADEQUACY OF INTERVIEWS VS CHECKLISTS FOR CLASSIFYING CHILDHOOD PSYCHIATRIC-DISORDER BASED ON PARENT REPORTS

Background: The advantages and disadvantages of lay-administered struc tured interviews and self-administered problem checklists for estimati ng prevalence and associated features of childhood psychiatric disorde r have attracted little comment. This article compares the scientific adequacy of these 2 instruments for classifying DSM-III-R categories o f childhood psychiatric disorder in general population samples. Method s: Study data are from parental assessments of 251 children aged 6 to 16 years participating in a 2-stage measurement evaluation study. Reli ability and validity were compared between the Diagnostic interview fo r Children and Adolescents (the structured interview used in the study ) and the revised Ontario Child Health Study scales (the self-administ ered problem checklist used in the study). Results: Reliability estima tes based on the kappa statistic were comparable for the 2 instruments and ranged from 0.21 (conduct disorder) to 0.70 (depression) on the l ay interview and from 0.27 (depression) to 0.61 (oppositional defiant disorder) on the self-administered checklist. Validity coefficients te nded to favor the checklist categories, but only marginally. Conclusio ns: On balance, differences in reliability and validity were small bet ween the 2 instruments. These differences would appear to have no disc ernible impact on the knowledge about prevalence and associated featur es of disorder generated by use of such instruments in general populat ion surveys.