Context:
Clinicians often rely on the self-report symptoms of patients in making clinical decisions; hence it is important that these scales be reliable.
Objective:
To determine the test-retest reliability of healthy youth in completing a graded symptom scale (GSS), modified from the Head Injury Scale Self-Report Concussion Symptoms Scale (HIS).
Design:
Repeated-measures.
Setting:
Middle school classroom.
Patients or Other Participants:
126 middle school students.
Intervention:
A survey consisting of a demographic and life events questionnaire and a GSS asking about symptom severity and duration.
Main Outcomes Measures:
Score for each symptom on the severity and duration scale and a total symptom score (TSS) and the total number of symptoms endorsed (TSE) from the severity scale. Responses on a life events questionnaire were also recorded.
Results:
We found excellent reliability for TSS (ICC = .93) and TSE (ICC = .88) for the severity scale. We found moderate to excellent reliability on the individual symptoms of both the severity (ICC = .65-.89) and duration (ICC =.56-.96) scales.
Conclusions:
Healthy youth can reliably self-report symptoms using a GSS. This patient-oriented outcome measure should be incorporated into more investigations in this age group.