Artikel
Short screening scales for psychological distress: properties of the K6 and K10 screening scales in community surveys
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Autoren
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Norbert Schmitz
- Douglas Hospital Research Centre, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
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A. Lesage
- University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada
| Veröffentlicht: | 8. September 2005 |
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Gliederung
Text
Brief screening instruments for mental disorders are widely used in clinical practice and epidemiological research. These self-report measures have the advantage of being inexpensive and easy to administer. Two new screening scales for psychological distress, the K10 and K6, have recently been developed. The 10-question and six-question scales were constructed from a reduced set of questions based on Item Response Theory models and were validated in a two-stage clinical reappraisal survey.
The development of the K6 and K10 scales and their potential uses will be discussed using data from a recent Canadian health survey (CCHS 1.2, n=36,984). Performance of the screening scales in detecting DSM-IV mood and anxiety disorders was assessed by calculating the areas under receiver operating characteristic curves (AUCs). Stratum-Specific Likelihood Ratios (SSLRs) were computed to help produce individual-level predicted probabilities of being a case from screening scale scores in other samples.
Both scales had consistent psychometric properties across major sociodemographic subsamples and both scales were suitable to assess mood and anxiety disorders in the population (K10 AUC: 0.88, 95%CI: 0.85-0.91; K6 AUC: 0.85, 95% CI: 0.81-0.88).
The brevity, strong psychometric properties, and ability to identify mental disorders make the K10 and K6 attractive for use in general-purpose health surveys.
