[Polish adaptation and validation of beck youth inventories of emotional and social impairment]

Abstract

Introduction: Psychiatric disorders are common among children and adolescents, affecting about 15-22% of this population. In order to fully develop emotional and cognitive skills, those children require professional care at early stages of the illness. Inventories addressing the broad range of emotional and social impairments, with high reliability and validity, can be of great help in early diagnostics. Self-report scales were proven valuable diagnostic tools even for young children. The Beck Youth Inventories (BYI) are five self-report measures for children between the ages of 7 and 14. They assess a child's experience of self-concept, depression, anxiety, anger and disruptive behaviour. BYI were created in response to epidemiological studies demonstrating significant prevalence of psychiatric disorders in children as well as the U.S. governmental report suggesting a high value of a brief questionnaires for early diagnostics of those disorders.

Aim: To our knowledge, there existed no Polish self-report scale for children examining a broad range of psychiatric disturbances. The aim of the study was to create a Polish version of BYI and to examine its psychometric properties.

Method: Using a culturally-adapted Polish translation, we examined 197 students of three primary schools in Warsaw.

Results: The scales had high reliability (Cronbach's alpha from 0.87 to 0.93). The validity was confirmed by intercorrelations between scales. In addition, boys scored higher on theAnger and Disruptive behaviour scales and young children on the Self-concept scale.

Conclusion: Polish self-report inventories for children, examining emotional and social impairments have been created. Very high reliability and good validity of each scale qualify them as trustworthy tools both in scientific research and in individual diagnostics.