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The Y‐OQ‐12: psychosocial screening of youth in primary care medicine using items from an outcome measure
Author(s) -
Tzoumas Anthony C.,
Tzoumas Jennifer L.,
Burlingame Gary M.,
Nelson Philip L.,
Wells M. Gawain,
Gray Douglas D.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
clinical psychology and psychotherapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.315
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1099-0879
pISSN - 1063-3995
DOI - 10.1002/cpp.554
Subject(s) - psychosocial , psychology , distress , checklist , clinical psychology , psychiatry , cognitive psychology
The studies reported herein describe the successful development and validation of a youth mental health screening instrument for identifying psychosocial distress in pediatric care patients. As a subset of 12 items from the well‐established Youth Outcome Questionnaire‐2.01 (Y‐OQ‐2.01), the Youth Outcome Questionnaire‐12 (Y‐OQ‐12) screen intends to be the first stage in a two‐stage screening process. Patients screened as positive complete the full‐length Y‐OQ‐2.01 in the second stage. A stage two score in the clinical range can serve as a baseline in continuous outcome tracking using the Y‐OQ‐2.01. The 12 parent‐report items of the Y‐OQ‐12 were selected using a combination of items from the Y‐OQ‐2.01 using a known‐groups approach based on community ( n = 500) and outpatient psychiatric ( n = 500) samples. The sensitivity of the Y‐OQ‐12 was 0.84, with a specificity of 0.82 and an internal consistency of 0.90. Two factors emerged, accounting for 48% and 9% of the variance (‘mood/behavioural symptom distress’ and ‘quality of life’, respectively). A second validation study involving 371 youth from pediatric settings in three US states compared the Y‐OQ‐12 with the Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC) and the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children‐Present State. The Y‐OQ‐12 demonstrated sensitivity, specificity and predictive power that were comparable to the PSC and shows promise for screening in routine practice. The authors encourage the use of the Y‐OQ‐12 in practice and await the replication of these findings in future research. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.