Measuring outcomes within inpatient child and adolescent mental health services: an evaluation of the Recovery Questionnaire for Young People

Abstract

Background The notion of personal recovery has become central to the delivery of mental health services; however, no published subjective recovery measure has been validated in an inpatient adolescent mental health sample. We aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Recovery Questionnaire for Young People (ReQuest‐YP) in this inpatient context. Methods Both cross‐sectional and longitudinal self‐report data were collected. The ReQuest‐YP was administered to 65 adolescents (11 males, 52 females and 2 who identified as transgender) within inpatient child and adolescent mental health services (UK) along with a feedback questionnaire, to assess the face validity of the measure. The young person's Health of the National Outcome Scales (HoNOSCA) score, as rated by clinicians in inpatient services, was also obtained to assess the convergent validity of the measure. Results The results demonstrated that the ReQuest‐YP demonstrated excellent internal consistency (alpha ≥ .914), test–retest reliability (ICC = .91) and sensitivity to change (Z = −2.09). The measure did not correlate with the ratings on the HoNOSCA. Feedback indicated the ReQuest‐YP was relevant and acceptable to young people. Suggestions were made about refining some questionnaire items. Conclusions The ReQuest‐YP demonstrated clinical utility as a measure of subjective recovery in inpatient child and adolescent mental health services. Refinement of some of the questions along with further evaluation of the measure in this population is recommended. The ReQuest‐YP offers a potential tool for exploring, assessing and evaluating subjective or personal recovery for young people in inpatient units. The measure is potentially reliable, valid and acceptable to service users, and so clinicians may wish to consider use in these settings. There is indication that the questionnaire is also sensitive to change in an inpatient admission context, although further work is needed.

Exploratory structural equation modeling: a streamlined step by step approach using the R Project software

“…The SDQ structure has been challenged with different proposed factorial models across various national and age samples [8,23,29,31,32]. For example, working with Malaysian parental SDQ ratings for children 5-13 years, Gomez and Stavropoulos [29] demonstrated support for an oblique six-factor model involving aside of the five SDQ domains a positive construal factor comprising all the 10 SDQ positive worded items [29].…”

Editorial: The job of an editor—one year on

“…It is aimed at shortening inpatient treatment, part of a larger body of knowledge that is rapidly developing in the field of alternatives to inpatient admissions (Kwok et al, 2016;Ougrin et al, 2018;Ougrin et al, 2014). Staying with the inpatient care theme, we publish the first evaluation of the Recovery Questionnaire for Young People (ReQuest-YP), a novel outcome measure for personal recovery in hospitalised young people (Bentley, Bucci, & Hartley, 2019). We also examine the impact of mentoring in young people with ADHD and learning disabilities (Haft, Chen, LeBlanc, Tencza, & Hoeft, 2019), a new potential way of achieving health improvements delivered by peers acting as mentors.…”