Psychometric properties of an African symptoms check list scale: the Ndetei-Othieno-Kathuku scale
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Date
2006-05Author
Ndetei David M.
Othieno, CJ
Mutiso, V
Ongecha, FA
Kokonya, DA
Omar, A
Gakinya, B
Mwangi, J
Type
ArticleLanguage
enMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Objectives: To profile and quantify the psychometric properties of the NOK (Ndetei-Othieno-Kathuku) scale against internationally used Gold-standards and benchmarks for mild psychiatric disorders and post-traumatic stress disorders and to provide a potential easy to administer culture sensitive instrument for screening and assessing those with possible psychiatric disorders for the Kenyan and similar social-cultural situations. Design: Cross-Sectional quantitative study.
Setting: A psychiatric clinical consultation setting and Kyanguli Secondary School psychotrauma counselling clinical set-up.
Subjects: Survivors of the Nairobi USA Embassy bombing who were referred for psychiatric treatment and survivors of a fire disaster from a rural Kenyan school (Kyanguli School fire disaster) including students, parents of the diseased children and staff members.
Results: Positive correlation was found between the NOK and all the instruments. The highest correlations were between the NOK and the BDI and SCL-90 (r = 0.557 to 0.786). The differences between the NOK scores among the different groups were statistically significant (F ratio = 13.54 to 160.34, p < 0.01). The reliability coefficient (internal consistency) of the scale, alpha = 0.9733. Other item statistics and correlations of the scale are discussed.
Conclusion: It is concluded that the NOK has high concurrent and discriminant validity as well as a high internal consistency and that it can be used for the rapid assessment of psychotrauma victims of all age groups; and stress in general in similar age groups in the local setting. It is culture appropriate and sensitive
URI
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16866223http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/17517
Citation
East Afr Med J. 2006 May;83(5):280-7Publisher
Department of Psychiatry, University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya;
Collections
- Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) [10377]