The Afghan Symptom Checklist
| Information about Measure | |
|---|---|
| First Name | Kenneth |
| Last Name | Miller |
| Not Available | |
| Affiliation | War Child Holland |
| Other means of contacting author (e.g., website, Academia.edu, ResearchGate) | https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kenneth_Miller11 |
| Mental health assessment tool that was adapted/developed/validated | The Afghan Symptom Checklist |
| Mental health condition assessed | Trauma- and Stressor-Related Disorders |
| Idiom of distress included, if any | “thinking too much”; jigar khun; asabi; “beating oneself”; fishar-e-bala; fishar-e-payin |
| Lifestage of interest | Adult (General) |
| Age range (age – age) | — |
| Country or countries where tool was developed/adapted/validated | Afghanistan |
| Language(s) of the adapted/developed/validated tool | Dari |
| Clinical or community sample? | Community |
| Subpopulation in which tool was developed/validated (e.g., tool was developed and tested among middle-class women)? | — |
| Development procedures | Locally developed |
| If validated, what was the gold standard? | — |
| Description of other development procedures, if applicable | Narratives of distress and recovery following adversity were collected in a convenience sample of 10 men and 10 women to develop 22 original indicator items. These were translated and back-translated from English to Dari, then reviewed and modified for clarity by two local consultants and pilot-tested in a group of 60 community members before administration in a community survey (n=324) in 8 of 16 districts in Kabul. Principal components analysis identified three main factors: Sadness with Social Withdrawal and Somatic distress (Cronbach’s alpha = .93), Ruminative Sadness Without Social Withdrawal (Cronbach’s alpha = .88), and Stress Induced Reactivity (Cronbach’s alpha-.74). |
| Cronbach’s alpha | .74 – .93 |
| Sensitivity | — |
| Spec | — |
| Other information about tool (e.g., additional psychometrics [NPV, PPV, Youden’s index, diagnostic odds ratio]) | The tool measures three dimensions of mental health: functioning in the community, functioning within one’s family, and one’s internal state. |
| Links to development/adaptation/validation studies and/or previous studies using the tool | Miller, K. E., Omidian, P., Quraishy, A. S., Quraishy, N., Nasiry, M. N., Nasiry, S., Karyar N.M & Yaqubi, A. A. (2006). The Afghan symptom checklist: a culturally grounded approach to mental health assessment in a conflict zone. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 76(4), 423-433. |
| Notes when administering the tool | This tool should be administered verbally and with the use of visual graphics. |