Measuring mental health and wellbeing outcomes for children and adolescents to inform practice and policy: a review of child self-report measures

Abstract

There is a growing appetite for mental health and wellbeing outcome measures that can inform clinical practice at individual and service levels, including use for local and national benchmarking. Despite a varied literature on child mental health and wellbeing outcome measures that focus on psychometric properties alone, no reviews exist that appraise the availability of psychometric evidence and suitability for use in routine practice in child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) including key implementation issues. This paper aimed to present the findings of the first review that evaluates existing broadband measures of mental health and wellbeing outcomes in terms of these criteria. The following steps were implemented in order to select measures suitable for use in routine practice: literature database searches, consultation with stakeholders, application of inclusion and exclusion criteria, secondary searches and filtering. Subsequently, detailed reviews of the retained measures’ psychometric properties and implementation features were carried out. 11 measures were identified as having potential for use in routine practice and meeting most of the key criteria: 1) Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment, 2) Beck Youth Inventories, 3) Behavior Assessment System for Children, 4) Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale, 5) Child Health Questionnaire, 6) Child Symptom Inventories, 7) Health of the National Outcome Scale for Children and Adolescents, 8) Kidscreen, 9) Pediatric Symptom Checklist, 10) Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, 11) Youth Outcome Questionnaire. However, all existing measures identified had limitations as well as strengths. Furthermore, none had sufficient psychometric evidence available to demonstrate that they could reliably measure both severity and change over time in key groups. The review suggests a way of rigorously evaluating the growing number of broadband self-report mental health outcome measures against standards of feasibility and psychometric credibility in relation to use for practice and policy.

Exploring the relationship between quality of life and mental health problems in children: implications for measurement and practice

“…Most straightforwardly, they highlight the known link between mental health problems and impaired quality of life, underlining the relevance of measuring quality of life as a key outcome of mental health interventions [9][10][11]. This is especially significant given the acknowledgment that, alongside decreasing symptoms, a key goal of intervention may be to ensure that mental health difficulties have minimal impact on functioning and quality of life [11,27].…”

“…It is hoped that by addressing these questions we can contribute to the wider debate about how quality of life should be considered, measured and supported in relation to interventions in mental health generally and in child mental health specifically [9][10][11].…”

Measuring adolescent mental health around the globe: psychometric properties of the self-report Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in South Africa, and comparison with UK, Australian and Chinese data

“…There is also a growing interest in the voice of adolescents as part of assessments, such as through self-report measures (Deighton et al 2014). For large-scale implementation, freely available, wellstandardised instruments are likely to be most feasible.…”

Adaptação na Transição para a Escola: estudo do Questionário de Adaptação Escolar e da Escala de Competência Social do SSBS-2

“…A tarefa de solicitar autorrelatos confiáveis e válidos a crianças pequenas é dificultada por uma série de fatores, nomeadamente os seus limites cognitivos, níveis inconsistentes de envolvimento com a entrevista ou autorrelato, e os efeitos de resposta e vieses motivacionais que tendem a distorcer o relato das crianças em relação às suas caraterísticas (Byrne, 1996). As pesquisas com base em medidas de autorrelato com crianças sugerem que estas têm tendência para responder com base no seu estado no momento da avaliação e não de acordo com níveis mais gerais de ajustamento, podendo ser medidas menos confiáveis (Deighton et al, 2014). Também existem indícios de um menor relato de dificuldades comportamentais em crianças pequenas (eg.…”