Global Mental Health Assessment Database (GMhAD) Keyword Glossary
Locally developed: a tool which is created from the “ground-up” in the setting in which it is to be used or implemented; often, but not always, this will include collaboration or consultation with community members and can also employ and/or measure local understandings or idioms of distress or cultural concepts of distress (Kaiser et al., 2013)
Kaiser BN, Kohrt BA, Keys HM, Khoury NM, Brewster A-RT. Strategies for assessing mental health in Haiti: Local instrument development and transcultural translation. Transcult Psychiatry. 2013;50(4):532–58
Culturally adapted: an extant tool that is revised to include culturally relevant language, elements, and nuances to better measure the mental disorder of interest. For example, a series of translations (e.g., by lay or professional bilingual individuals) and focus group discussions to assess and improve comprehensibility, acceptability, and relevance of a tool (van Ommeren et al., 1999; Flaherty et al. 1999)
van Ommeren, M., B. Sharma, S. Thapa, R. Makaju, D. Prasain, R. Bhattarai, and J. de Jong. Preparing instruments for transcultural research: Use of the translation monitoring form with Nepali-speaking Bhutanese refugees. Transcultural Psychiatry. 1999;36:285–301.
Flaherty, J.A., Gaviria, F.M., Pathak, D., Mitchell, T., Wintrob, R., Richman, J.A. & Birz, S. Developing instruments for cross-cultural psychiatric research. J. Nerv. Ment. Dis. 1999;176: 257-263.
Validated: Validation assesses whether an instrument measures what it is intended to measure, by comparing the tool to an extant “gold standard” that captures the mental disorder of interest (e.g., diagnosis by a local clinician); validation may also be achieved by comparing a tool with an existing, already-validated tool or another criterion, such as recognition by the local community as suffering mental distress (Kohrt et al., 2011; Bolton, 2001)
Kohrt, B. A., Jordans, M. J., Tol, W. A., Luitel, N. P., Maharjan, S. M., & Upadhaya, N. Validation of cross-cultural child mental health and psychosocial research instruments: adapting the Depression Self-Rating Scale and Child PTSD Symptom Scale in Nepal. BMC psychiatry. 2011; 11(1), 127.
Bolton, P. (2001). Cross-cultural validity and reliability testing of a standard psychiatric assessment instrument without a gold standard. The Journal of nervous and mental disease, 189(4), 238-242.
For further information, please review: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5463570/
Cronbach’s alpha: Cronbach’s alpha is a measure of internal consistency, that is, how closely related a set of items are as a group. It is considered to be a measure of scale reliability. Typically, in psychometrics, a value of 0.7 or above is considered adequate (Nunnally and Bernstein 1994).
Nunnally, J. C., and I. H. Bernstein. 1994. Psychometric theory. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Sensitivity: Sensitivity is the ability of a test to correctly classify an individual as manifesting the condition
Sensitivity = a / a+c
= a (true positive) / a+c (true positive + false negative)
= Probability of being test positive when the condition is present.
Specificity: The ability of a test to correctly classify an individual as disease- free is called the test′s specificity.
Specificity = d / b+d
= d (true negative) / b+d (true negative + false positive)
= Probability of being test negative when disease absent.
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