Open this publication in new window or tab >>Show others...
2023 (English)In: BMC Public Health, E-ISSN 1471-2458, Vol. 23, article id 1989Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Background
Psychosocial risk factors in the home may impair children’s health and development and increase their risk of maltreatment. The Safe Environment for Every Kid (SEEK) model helps address these problems, and aims to strengthen families, support parents and parenting, and thereby promote children’s health, development, wellbeing and safety. The SEEK model includes use of the Parent Screening Questionnaire (SEEK-PSQ) at routine preventive child health visits, assessment of their responses and, when indicated, referral to relevant services. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Swedish version of the SEEK-PSQ (PSQ-S).
Methods
This study is part of a cluster-randomised controlled trial of SEEK in the Swedish child health services. To validate the PSQ-S, parents (n=852) with children 0-18 months of age were invited to complete a survey comprising the PSQ-S as well as evidence-based standardized instruments for the targeted psychosocial risk factors. Data from 611 (72%) parents were analysed regarding sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) for each risk factor.
Results
As a whole, the PSQ-S had a sensitivity of 93%, specificity of 52%, PPV of 67% and NPV of 87%. For mothers and fathers combined, sensitivity was 80% for economic worries, 89% for depressive symptoms, 78% for parental stress, 47% for intimate partner violence (IPV) and 70% for alcohol misuse. Specificity was highest for IPV and alcohol misuse (91%) and lowest for depressive symptoms (64%). NPV values were high (81-99%) and PPV values were low to moderate (22-69%) for the targeted problems. Sensitivity was higher for mothers compared to fathers for economic worries, depressive symptoms and IPV. This difference was particularly evident for IPV (52% for mothers, 27% for fathers).
Conclusion
The SEEK-PSQ-S demonstrated good psychometric properties for identifying economic worries, depressive symptoms, parental stress and alcohol misuse but low sensitivity for IPV. The PSQ-S as a whole showed high sensitivity and NPV, indicating that most parents with or without the targeted psychosocial risk factors were correctly identified.
Trial registration
ISRCTN registry, study record 14429952 (https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN14429952)
Registration date 27/05/2020.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
BioMed Central (BMC), 2023
Keywords
Psychosocial risk factors, Child health, Child maltreatment, Prevention, Health promotion, Psychometrics, Validation, Child health services, Evidence-based practice, Women, Men
National Category
Public Health, Global Health, Social Medicine and Epidemiology Pediatrics
Research subject
Health Care Research
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-508708 (URN)10.1186/s12889-023-16792-4 (DOI)001127122200006 ()37828478 (PubMedID)
Funder
Region Uppsala
2023-08-082023-08-082024-01-31Bibliographically approved