Questionnaires as a method to improve the early detection of Emotional Problems and Behavioral Disorders by Dutch Preventive Child Health Care

Summary:

Early detection of emotional problems and behavioral disorders is one of the tasks of Dutch Preventive Child Health Care (CHC). This is done, mainly, during standard health examinations for which all children and/or their parents are invited at regular intervals.

Several studies have shown that CHC succeeds in identifying many children with such problems, but, also that many problems remain undetected. This thesis will add to this evidence.

This study assesses the degree to which a number of selected instruments (LSPPK, the KIVPA, the PSYBOBA, PSC en SDQ) could improve the early detection by CHC. It also applies statistical techniques based on Item Response Theory (IRT) to assess whether such techniques could overcome one of the inherent problems of relatively short questionnaires, i.e. a lack of precision and as a consequence a relatively high number of false positive and false negative decisions, when cut off points are being used. Using IRT an internet based instrument will be developed which allows for a classification of children above or below a predefined cut off point, with a high precision, using only a small number of items.