The FTF (Five to Fifteen): the development of a parent questionnaire for the assessment of ADHD and comorbid conditions

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a new parent questionnaire ("Five to Fifteen", or the FTF) for elicitation of symptoms and problems typical of ADHD and its comorbidities. The FTF comprises 181 statements related to behavioural or developmental problems that can be endorsed as either "does not apply" (0), applies sometimes or to some extent" (1), "definitely applies" (2), plus a number of open-ended questions including some about the child's strengths. The items are arranged into eight different domains (memory, learning, language, executive functions, motor skills, perception, social skills, and emotional/behavioural problems), most of which can be subdivided into subdomains. For each domain, a mean score ranging from 0-2 can be calculated. A representative sample (n=1350) of the total population of 6-15-year-old children was targeted. Parents of 63% of these completed a questionnaire and returned it to the researchers. Boys showed significantly more problems than did girls across domains and age. Younger children had more problems than pre-adolescents and adolescents (except in the domains of social skills and emotional/behavioural problems). Executive dysfunction was common, and 5.3% of all children in the population had clear problems suggesting a diagnosis of ADHD according to parent report. The paper provides means, medians, and 90(th) and 95(th) centiles for individual items as well as for the eight domains. The Discussion centres on whether or not the FTF can (or should) be used in school-aged children for the identification of children at risk for ADHD or other early childhood onset neuropsychiatric disorder.

Relations between brain volumes, neuropsychological assessment and parental questionnaire in prematurely born children

“…The FTF questionnaire has previously been proven useful in the assessment of children's development [8,14,19,35]. The validity of the FTF in detecting developmental disorders in 5-year-old children has been analysed, using the earlier version of the NEPSY II, called NEPSY, as the external criterion measure [19].…”

“…Five to fifteen A Five to fifteen (FTF) questionnaire [8,14,19,35] was sent to the parents 1 month prior to the fifth birthday of the child. The FTF is a validated questionnaire with 181 questions on different areas of the development and behaviour of children.…”

“…Questions that are not appropriate for children under school age were removed (items 16, 48 to 51, 63, 64, and 93 to 105). The questionnaire items have been listed elsewhere [14]. The following domains were included: Executive functioning (including attention, impulsivity and ability to plan and organize), Language, Memory, and Motor skills.…”

Child Neurodevelopmental and Behavioural Problems are Intercorrelated and Dimensionally Distributed in the General Population

“…Inter-rater and test-retest reliability coefficients were good-excellent (intra-class coefficients ranging from 0.97 to 1.0, and from 0.77 to 0.97, respectively), with the exception of eating problems at 0.57 [15]. With the aim of improving specificity, more items have subsequently been added based on the clinical literature, the Five To Fifteen questionnaire (FTF) [18], and our own clinical experience. Items tapping into DSM-IV-defined criteria for other disorders that have been shown to overlap with ASD, such as anorexia nervosa, OCD, and ODD/CD, have also been added, organized in modules based on theoretical and psychometric considerations, as detailed in documents available from the web-site of the Swedish Child Neuropsychiatry Science Foundation (http://www.childnps.se).…”

Desarrollo de una Escala de Autoinforme para la valoración del TDAH en la infancia (EA-TDAH): Estudio Delphi y datos de adecuación psicométrica

“…De esta manera, existe un gran número de herramientas creadas bajo el objetivo de valorar TDAH en niños, tales como las escalas Conners (Conners, 1989) o Vanderbilt (Wolraich et al, 2003), así como inventarios que evalúan diferentes sintomatologías asociadas con un amplio espectro de trastornos infantojuveniles, entre los que se incluyen los trastornos de atención y las conductas disruptivas: Sistema de evaluación de Achenbach (ASEBA; Achenbach y Rescorla, 2001) o Five to Fifteen (FTF; Kadesjö et al, 2004). Si bien algunas de estas herramientas cuentan con una versión dirigida a los niños y niñas de edades superiores a los 11 años, en su gran mayoría se crearon para ser respondidas por padres y Desarrollo De una escala De autoinforme para la valoración Del tDaH en la infancia (ea-tDaH): estuDio DelpHi y Datos De aDecuación psicométrica profesores, quienes en función de su comprensión de los constructos psicológicos por los que se les pregunta, se esfuerzan en dar una respuesta lo más ajustada posible a la realidad del niño.…”