Validity and reliability of a structured interview for early detection and risk assessment of parenting and developmental problems in young children: a cross-sectional study

BMC Pediatrics

Research Article

Jo M A Hermanns¹  Augustinus J P Schrijvers²  Henk F van Stel²  Ingrid I E Staal³ 

[1] Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht, Heidelberglaan 100, 3584 CX, Utrecht, The Netherlands;Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht, Heidelberglaan 100, 3584 CX, Utrecht, The Netherlands;Department of Preventive Child Health Care, Municipal Health Service Zeeland, Goes, The Netherlands;

关键词: Risk Assessment;    Convergent Validity;    Parenting Stress;    Interrater Reliability;    Child Protective Service;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2431-12-71

 received in 2011-07-18, accepted in 2012-05-28,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundPreventive child health care is well suited for the early detection of parenting and developmental problems. However, as far as the younger age group is concerned, there are no validated early detection instruments which cover both the child and its environment. Therefore, we have developed a broad-scope structured interview which assesses parents’ concerns and their need for support, using both the parental perspective and the experience of the child health care nurse: the Structured Problem Analysis of Raising Kids (SPARK). This study reports the psychometric characteristics of the SPARK.MethodA cross-sectional study of 2012 18-month-old children, living in Zeeland, a province of the Netherlands. Inter-rater reliability was assessed in 67 children. Convergent validity was assessed by comparing SPARK-domains with domains in self-report questionnaires on child development and parenting stress. Discriminative validity was assessed by comparing different outcomes of the SPARK between groups with different levels of socio-economic status and by performing an extreme-groups comparison. The user experience of both parents and nurses was assessed with the aid of an online survey.ResultsThe response rate was 92.1% for the SPARK. Self-report questionnaires were returned in the case of 66.9% of the remaining 1721 children. There was selective non-reporting: 33.1% of the questionnaires were not returned, covering 65.2% of the children with a high-risk label according to the SPARK (p < 0.001). Inter-rater reliability was good to excellent with intraclass correlations between 0.85 and 1.0 for physical topics; between 0.61 and 0.8 for social-emotional topics and 0.92 for the overall risk assessment. Convergent validity was unexpectedly low (all correlations ≤0.3) although the pattern was as expected. Discriminative validity was good. Users were satisfied with the SPARK and identified some topics for improvement.ConclusionThe SPARK discriminates between children with a high, increased and low risk of parenting and developmental problems. It does so in a reliable way, but more research is needed on aspects of validity and in other populations.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© van Stel et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012