Cultural Development of an Adolescent Mental Health Quality of Life Instrument

描述（由申请人提供）：改善健康相关的生活质量（HRQOL）是所有慢性疾病治疗的主要目标。此外，越来越多的人一致认为，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精神健康问题的青少年开发的HRQOL工具。因此，本研究的中心目标是开发、测试和验证青少年心理健康HRQOL工具[aql - mh]的西班牙语和英语版本。这将提供一种文化上有效的结果衡量，有助于减少精神卫生保健方面的差距。该工具将帮助精神卫生专业人员在诊断过程中关注特定的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。该提案为具有丰富行为科学研究经验的年轻教师提供了一个独特的机会，以推进她的职业生涯并获得独立的资金。本提案的最终目标是开发一种RO1应用程序，将aql - mh应用于具有代表性的临床样本，以便将其用于评估治疗方案和干预措施的临床有效性。这项建议的具体目的如下：

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.