Abstract
BACKGROUND: The Children Service Interview was designed as a brief measure of service use related to mental health problems in Great Britain.
METHOD: We validated the Children's Services Interview against medical records from a sample of 87 children, and assessed test-retest reliability from 25 parents completing two interviews. We examined criterion validity by looking at the service use patterns of children attending clinics for different types of disorders.
RESULTS: The Children's Services Interview showed high levels of face validity and moderate or better concordance with medical records as far as contacts were recorded in the case notes. Test-retest reliability was moderate or better apart from contacts with the voluntary sector, teachers, and the number and duration of appointments with some professionals.
CONCLUSION: The study suggests the Children's Services Interview can extract moderately valid and reliable data on service use.
DECLARATION OF INTEREST: Tamsin Ford was supported by a Wellcome Clinical Training Fellowship in Health Services Research while completing this work.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 36-49 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jan 2007 |
Keywords
- Adolescent
- Child
- Child, Preschool
- Female
- Humans
- Interview, Psychological/methods
- Male
- Mental Health Services/standards
- Psychology, Child/methods
- Psychometrics/methods
- Reproducibility of Results
- United Kingdom
