Cultural Development of an Adolescent Mental Health Quality of Life Instrument

描述(申请人提供)：改善健康相关生活质量(HRQOL)是治疗所有慢性病的主要目标。此外，人们越来越一致认为，对生活质量的评估对于全面了解儿童的身心健康状况至关重要。据我们所知，目前还没有专门为有心理健康问题的青少年开发的HRQOL工具。因此，拟议的应用程序的中心目标是开发、测试和验证西班牙语和英语的青少年精神健康HRQOL量表[AQOL-MH]。这将提供一个在文化上有效的结果衡量标准，有助于减少精神卫生保健方面的差距。该工具将帮助精神健康专业人员在诊断过程中专注于特定的HRQOL领域；从而帮助患者和提供者设定、定义和评估适当的治疗目标。这项提议为在行为科学研究方面拥有丰富经验的年轻教师提供了一个独特的机会，可以促进她的职业生涯并获得独立的资金。这项建议的最终目标是开发AHRO1应用程序，将AQOL-MH应用于具有代表性的临床样本，以确定其在评估治疗方案和干预措施的临床有效性方面的有用性。这项建议的具体目标如下： 目标1：制定主题，回应波多黎各人和墨西哥裔美国人以及盎格鲁人接受心理健康问题服务的青少年对生活质量的看法。发展将使用扎根的理论方法，使用焦点小组和对拉丁裔和美国非拉丁裔青年的临床样本进行深入采访，这些青年被招募为四种普遍存在的精神障碍之一：ADHD、品行障碍、广泛性焦虑和抑郁。 目的2：使用来自波多黎各和美国的青少年的临床和非临床样本来测试在目标1中开发的测量的心理测量学特性。心理测量学分析将包括对内部结构的评估，对拉丁裔和非拉丁裔以及性别群体的不同项目功能的测试，以及结构效度的初步测试。 目的3：在波多黎各青少年ADHD和抑郁障碍的循证实践中，测试简短的AQOL-MH在服务使用过程中跟踪变化的有效性。为了实现这一目标，我们将招募60名开始接受治疗的青年，我们将每隔6个月获得一次基线和两次HRQOL重复评估。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Improving health related quality of life (HRQOL) is a major goal in the treatment of all chronic illnesses. In addition, there is growing consensus that assessment of quality of life is crucial to provide a complete picture of children's physical and mental health status. To our knowledge there are no HRQOL instruments specifically developed for adolescents with mental health problems. Therefore, the central goal of the proposed application is to develop, test, and validate an adolescent HRQOL instrument for mental health [AQOL-MH) in Spanish and English. This will provide a culturally valid outcome measure that will contribute to reduce mental health care disparities. This instrument will help mental health professionals focus on particular HRQOL domains during the diagnostic process; thereby assisting both patients and providers set, define and evaluate adequate treatment goals. This proposal presents a unique opportunity for a young faculty with extensive experience in behavioral sciences research, to advance her career and obtain independent funding. The ultimate objective of this proposal is to develop ah RO1 application to administer the AQOL-MH to representative clinical samples in order to target its usefulness in evaluating clinical effectiveness in treatment programs and interventions. The specific aims of this proposal are the following: Aim 1: To develop themes that respond to the construct of quality of life as perceived by adolescents who are receiving services for mental health problems in Puerto Rican and Mexican American, as well as Anglo populations. The development will be achieved using a grounded theory approach with the use of focus groups and in-depth interviews of clinical samples of Latino and US non-Latino youth who are recruited to have one of four prevalent mental disorders; ADHD, Conduct Disorder, Generalized Anxiety, and Depression. Aim 2: To test the psychometric properties of the measure developed in Aim 1 using clinical and nonclinical samples of youth from Puerto Rico and the US. Psychometric analyses will include assessments of internal structure, tests for differential item functioning across Latino and non-Latino as well as gender groups, and preliminary tests of construct validity. Aim 3: Test the usefulness of the short-form AQOL-MH for tracking change during the course of service use in evidence based practice among youth with ADHD and Depression disorders in Puerto Rico. To achieve this aim we will recruit 60 youth who begin to receive treatment and we will obtain a baseline and two repeated assessments of HRQOL at six month intervals.