The Afghan Symptom Checklist

Information about Measure
First Name Kenneth
Last Name Miller
Email 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 Orthopsychiatry76(4), 423-433.
Notes when administering the tool This tool should be administered verbally and with the use of visual graphics.