The Study Of Development And Well-Being Assessment In Anxiety Disorders Among Children And Adolescents

ObjectiveTo evaluate the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the Development and Well-Being Assessment (DAWBA) by using it to determine anxiety disorders among children and adolescents.Subjects and Methods480 subjects who are 6 to 17 years old divided into three groups: The case group was consisted of 62 patients with anxiety disorders, referred in the Mental Health Centre of China Medical University from May in 2007 to January in 2008, The clinical control group was composed of 90 patients with other mental disorders except anxiety disorders, and the community control group was composed of 328 students from schools that were sampled in cluster from Shenyang city. They were assessed with the Anxiety Disorders Section of the Development and Weil-Being Assessment. The parents are interviewed in all cases, as are young people aged 11 or more. The measuring way was face-to-face interviews. There were 6 interviewers in the study, 30 cases were randomly selected from the three groups to evaluate the agreement between the 2 interviewers. The study included the agreement between the final DAWBA diagnoses and the preliminary computer diagnosis with the clinical diagnoses and the sensitivity, specificity and predictive values of the assessment by comparing the Development and Weil-Being Assessment diagnoses with independent psychiatric diagnoses. The test-retest reliability was investigated by reapplying the measure on 54 subjects after 2-3 weeks. ResultsThere were 97% (a kappa of 0.89)and 93% (a kappa of 0.8) agreement between the 2 interviewers of the preliminary computer diagnosis and the final DAWBA diagnoses. The agreement between the preliminary computer diagnosis with the clinical diagnoses is 92% (a kappa of 0.77) .And sensitivity is 90%, specificity is 92%, positive predictive value is 72%, and a negative predictive value is 98%; The agreement between the final DAWBA diagnoses with the clinical diagnoses is 95% (a kappa of 0.84) .And sensitivity is 92%, specificity is 95%, positive predictive value is 83%, and a negative predictive value is 98%; there were 89% and 93% agreement between the initial and repeat diagnoses of the preliminary computer diagnosis and the final DAWBA diagnoses.ConclusionThe Anxiety Disorders Section of the DAWBA is potentially useful as a clinical tool, facilitating skilled clinical assessment or, where necessary, providing 'second best' computerized diagnoses when no suitable clinician is available.