DEVELOPMENT, RELIABILITY, CONTENT AND DISCRIMINANT VALIDITY OF SELF-DESCRIPTION ADOLESCENT INVENTORY

Abstract

In the last years the adolescent population has incremented in a thoughtful way, especially in America, health problems have also raised too. The World Health Organization as well as the World Federation of Mental Health had considered high-priority to aid adolescents due to the emotional and physical stability is the basis for a healthy and full development in the adulthood. The psychological evaluation during adolescence has charged great relevance. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a new instrument, the Self-Description Adolescent Inventory, a proposition which goal is the identification of risk factors in the family, social, personal, school, and health dimensions. The development of the instrument was done basically in two studies. The first one, in order to examine the content validity by using kappa concordance coefficients (31 judges participated), and the second one, to evaluate the realibility and the discriminant validity. There were several adolescents samples (13 to 18 years old); 113 pilot sample students, 1660 normal students of public and private high and junior-school, and clinical sample of adolescents attending mental public and private health institutions in Mexico City. The analysis brought up high kappa coefficients (.935) and high Cronbach alphas too (global alpha .90). Significant differences between normal and clinical sample by using t Student were established

Keywords

• Assessment
• risk
• adolescence
• validity
• reliability