Acholi Psychosocial Assessment Instrument

Information about Measure
First Name Theresa
Last Name Betancourt
Email [email protected]
Affiliation Boston College School of Social Work
Other means of contacting author (e.g., website, Academia.edu, ResearchGate)
Mental health assessment tool that was adapted/developed/validated Acholi Psychosocial Assessment Instrument
Mental health condition assessed Anxiety and Depression
Idiom of distress included, if any Depression-like (two tam, par and kumu), anxiety-like (ma lwor) and conduct problems (kwo maraco)
Lifestage of interest Childhood or Adolescence
Age range (age – age) 14-17
Country or countries where tool was developed/adapted/validated Uganda
Language(s) of the adapted/developed/validated tool Acholi Luo
Clinical or community sample? Community
Subpopulation in which tool was developed/validated (e.g., tool was developed and tested among middle-class women)? Tool was developed for use among internally displaced persons (IDPs), specifically war-affected adolescents.
Development procedures Locally developed
If validated, what was the gold standard?
Description of other development procedures, if applicable
Cronbach’s alpha 0.93
Sensitivity
Spec
Other information about tool (e.g., additional psychometrics [NPV, PPV, Youden’s index, diagnostic odds ratio]) Other psychometric properties examined for this specific empirical study include: Split Halves reliability (Spearman-Brown): 0.94, Test–retest reliability (r): 0.84, and Inter-rater reliability: 0.74.
Links to development/adaptation/validation studies and/or previous studies using the tool Betancourt, Theresa S,ScD., M.A., Bass, J., PhD., Borisova, I., EdM., Neugebauer, R., PhD., Speelman, L., M.A., Onyango, G., M.A., & Bolton, P., M.B.B.S. (2009). Assessing local instrument reliability and validity: A field-based example from northern uganda. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 44(8), 685-92. doi:http://dx.doi.org.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/10.1007/s00127-008-0475-1
Notes when administering the tool The tool should be administered verbally in the Acholi Luo, with the aims of assessing local idioms of distress that approximate Western psychiatric classifications of depression, anxiety, and conduct problems. In this case, both the youth and their caregivers were asked for responses to each item on the APAI scale.