The characteristics of users of an online screening tool for children and adolescents with intellectual disability and of those being screened.

Screening tools can help with the identification of intellectual disability, but little is known about who uses them. This study analysed anonymous information from 2691 users of an evidence-based, online, intellectual disability screening questionnaire for children and adolescents (CAIDS-Q) to explore the characteristics of the users and of those being screened. The users were split almost equally between parents/family members (48.6%) and professionals (49.9%), with the majority (63.8%) of the latter group being health staff. Significant differences in the characteristics of the children being screened were found, according to whether the user was a parent/family member or a professional, with the overall pattern suggesting that professionals screened children with greater complexity of needs, but about whom less was known. The screened children had a range of areas of difficulties that are common to those with intellectual disability. Implications for practice are discussed.

Screening for intellectual disability with the Child and Adolescent Intellectual Screening Questionnaire: a modified Delphi approach.

AIM: To develop a consensus framework to evaluate the impact of screening for intellectual disability, using the Child and Adolescent Intellectual Disability Screening Questionnaire (CAIDS-Q) in paediatric neurodevelopment clinics. METHOD: A modified Delphi survey with four phases (literature review; initial development of framework [participants=11 parents, 8 professionals]; qualitative interviews [participants=4 parents, 15 professionals]; questionnaire development [participants=31 parents, 14 professionals] was used to develop the consensus framework. The framework was used to evaluate the impact of screening on six paediatricians and 31 parents of children who had participated in a previous paediatric screening project. RESULTS: Twelve of the original 20 items were retained based on levels of endorsement of 60 per cent or above. Direct benefits of using the CAIDS-Q were: indicating the child's level of functioning, increasing awareness of intellectual disability, helping to identify children with intellectual disability, and identifying potentially vulnerable children. Benefits related to subsequent diagnostic assessment were: promoting greater understanding of the child, identification of support needs, and receipt of support, particularly for the child at school. INTERPRETATION: The use of the CAIDS-Q had a number of direct and indirect benefits for children, families, and services as reported by parents and paediatricians. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: A 12-item framework was developed to evaluate the impact of screening for intellectual disability. Direct benefits of the Child and Adolescent Intellectual Disability Screening Questionnaire include increasing awareness and identification of intellectual disability. Indirect benefits included increased identification of support needs and receipt of support.

Mokken scales for testing both pre- and postintervention: an analysis of the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation-Outcome Measure (CORE-OM) before and after counseling.

Mokken scaling is increasingly being applied to assessing the extent to which clinical scales possess clinically useful properties, especially invariant item ordering (IIO). These scales are often used to track progress in symptoms over time to evaluate the success of an intervention. Such interventions are designed to affect psychopathological trait levels overall but may in some cases act disproportionately on some symptoms over others. As a result, there is no guarantee that the item orderings of a clinical scale will be preserved between the point at which individuals begin treatment and the point at which they can be considered recovered. In these situations, many of the potential benefits of IIO are undermined because an IIO identified at either time point will not be informative about changes in symptoms over time. In this study, we aimed to assess the extent to which the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation-Outcome Measure (CORE-OM) retained the same item orderings in a sample of individuals when initially presenting for counseling treatment and when discharged. From the 34 items of the CORE-OM we found a subset of 10 items exhibiting monotonicity, invariant item ordering, and highly similar item orderings when measured at both time points.

Assessing the accuracy of the WISC-IV seven-subtest short form and the child and adolescent intellectual disability screening questionnaire in identifying intellectual disability in children.

Little research has been conducted into the accuracy of abbreviated assessments in identifying children and young people with an intellectual disability (ID). The present study compared two such methods in a clinical population of individuals with (n = 106) and without (n = 170) ID: a 7-subtest short form of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales for Children--fourth edition (WISC-IV) proposed by Crawford and colleagues and the Child and Adolescent Intellectual Disability Screening Questionnaire (CAIDS-Q). Both the CAIDS-Q and the WISC-IV short form had high and comparable levels of predicting group classification (88% and 91% correct classification, respectively). Both methods would appear to offer clinicians and researchers an efficient and accurate means of identifying those who are likely to have ID. The WISC-IV short form was slightly more accurate, but the CAIDS-Q may offer the advantages of being shorter to administer and having no requirement for the user to have a particular qualification or training.