Journal article
The assessment of paranoia in young people: Item and test properties of the Bird Checklist of Adolescent Paranoia
- Abstract:
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Background Precise assessment tools for psychotic experiences in young people may help identify symptoms early and facilitate advances in treatment. In this study we provide an exemplar - with a paranoia scale for youth – for improving measurement precision for psychotic experiences using item response theory (IRT). We evaluate the psychometric properties of the new measure, test for measurement invariance, and assess its potential for computerised adaptive testing (CAT).
Method The 18-item Bird Checklist of Adolescent Paranoia (B-CAP) was completed by 1102 adolescents including 301 patients with mental health problems and 801 from the general population. After excluding outliers (n = 10), IRT was used to examine item properties, test reliability, and measurement invariance. The properties of an adaptive B-CAP were assessed using a simulation of 10,000 responses.
Results All B-CAP items were highly discriminative (a = 1.14–2.77), whereby small shifts in paranoia led to a higher probability of item endorsement. Test reliability was high (a > 0.90) across a wide range of paranoia severity (θ = −0.45–3.36), with the greatest precision at elevated levels. All items were invariant for gender, age, and population groups. The simulated adaptive B-CAP performed with high accuracy and required only 5–6 items at higher levels of paranoia severity.
Conclusions The B-CAP is a reliable assessment tool with excellent psychometric properties to assess both non-clinical and clinical levels of paranoia in young people, with potential as an efficient adaptive test. In future, these approaches could be used to develop a multidimensional CAT to assess the full range of psychotic experiences in youth.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Accepted manuscript, pdf, 990.9KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1016/j.schres.2020.03.046
Authors
- Publisher:
- Elsevier
- Journal:
- Schizophrenia Research More from this journal
- Volume:
- 220
- Pages:
- 116-122
- Publication date:
- 2020-04-02
- Acceptance date:
- 2020-03-21
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1573-2509
- ISSN:
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0920-9964
- Pmid:
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32247744
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1099154
- Local pid:
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pubs:1099154
- Deposit date:
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2020-06-08
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Elsevier B.V.
- Copyright date:
- 2020
- Rights statement:
- © 2020 Elsevier B.V.
- Notes:
- This is the accepted manuscript version of the article. The final version is available online from Elsevier at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2020.03.046
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