African Youth Psychosocial Assessment (AYPA)

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 African Youth Psychosocial Assessment (AYPA)
Mental health condition assessed Emotional and Behavioral Problems
Idiom of distress included, if any Not Applicable
Lifestage of interest Childhood or Adolescence
Age range (age – age)
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 and tested among adolescents that resided in a camp for internally displaced persons for at least 1 month
Development procedures Locally developed
If validated, what was the gold standard? Using a comparison of parent and self-reported ratings on presence of local syndrome terms
Description of other development procedures, if applicable
Cronbach’s alpha
Sensitivity
Spec
Other information about tool (e.g., additional psychometrics [NPV, PPV, Youden’s index, diagnostic odds ratio]) All sub-scales had satisfactory to excellent alpha values, listed as follows:prosocial/adaptive (α= 0.72), somatic complaints without medical cause (α= 0.74), externalizing problems (α=0.83),and internalizing problems (α= 0.88).
For the actual scale, see Appendix B- Table 1. https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/doi/epdf/10.1002/mpr.1420
Links to development/adaptation/validation studies and/or previous studies using the tool Betancourt, T. S., Yang, F., Bolton, P., Normand, S. (2014). Developing an African youth psychosocial assessment: An application of item response theory. International Journal of Methods Psychiatric Research, 23, 142–160. doi:10.1002/mpr.1420
Notes when administering the tool The assessment was designed to be administered verbally due to low literacy among respondents. A visual aid may be used to clarify response options for participants.