gms | German Medical Science

Background and Purpose: The screening tool Recognizing Acute Delirium As part of your Routine (RADAR) is a reliable and valide tool with only three items to assess Delirium. The translation and testing of psychometric properties are missing in German. Therefore the aims were to translate the RADAR, to determine the content validity, interrater-reliability, internal consistency, and feasibility of the Austrian RADAR (RADAR-A).

Research Focus: A quantitative cross-sectional design with individuals from different health-care sectors (N=137) assessed the content validity. Patients from acute care settings (n=60) were included for testing reliability. Based on descriptive analyzes, calculations were performed with content validity index (CVI), Cohens kappa, AC1-Statistics, and Kuder-Richardson (KR-20).

Methodological and Theoretical Focus: The translation was carried out according to the principles of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcome Research. The theoretical focus was based on the clinical decision-making for Delirium-Detection.

Results: The three items of the RADAR-A reached excellent values between .80 and .95 for the Item-CVI. Also the Kappa-Coefficient shows excellent agreements (.80≤κ≤.95). The results were satisfactory for the Scale-CVI/Average method (S-CVI/Ave .82-.87). Analysis of interrater-reliability demonstrated sufficient agreement between raters (n=60, Po=92.3-100%, AC1=.91-1.00). In terms of high rater agreements, Cohens kappa values showed no agreement (κ= -.025-0). Internal consistency for two items demonstrated a moderate KR-value (.498). The feasibility was rated to be partly satisfactory.

Conclusions: The content validity shows a satisfaction with the represented number of items. RADAR-A is an easy and comprehensible screening tool that sensitizes for delirium. However, before implementation in health-care sectors trainings are recommended with RADAR-A because of the results of reliability.