Psychometric evaluation of the anxiety scale within the interRAI child and youth mental health instruments

AbstractBackground: With 10 to 20% of Canadian children suffering with mental illness, the importance of earlyidentification and accurate assessment systems is clear. Unfortunately, many do not receive the mental healthtreatment necessary and wait-times for assessment can span up to a year. In response, the interRAI suite ofassessments were designed to comprehensively assess early signs of mental health impairments in children frombirth to 18 years.Methods: This study assesses the psychometric properties of the Anxiety Scale and addresses the identification ofanxiety within children diagnosed with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD); a commonlyunderrepresented sample in mental health psychometric studies. Data was collected from children aged 4–18 yearsin three different samples.Results: Results indicated reliable internal consistency and factor structure, as well as moderate-to-strongconvergent validity.Conclusions: We conclude that the Anxiety Scale exhibits psychometric qualities which demonstrate its clinicalutility for use within a child sample, as well as in children with IDD. The findings provide support to a larger bodyof research which show consistent psychometric rigour of the interRAI measures.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

PMC7390192