A Revised Iowa Collateral Head Injury Interview: a new instrument for the assessment of traumatic psychosocial frontal symptoms
Keywords:
Reliability, Validity, Assessment, Frontal symptoms, Traumatic brain injuryAbstract
Objective: To validate a semi-structured Revised Iowa Collateral Head Injury Interview (RICHII) to assess posttraumatic, psychosocial frontal symptoms.
Method: 1. To revise the RICHII in the light of recent research findings and previous pilot studies. 2. External experts assure face and content validity. 3. Standard reliability and validity study in a sample of consecutive patients fulfilling inclusion and exclusion criteria of severe head trauma. 4. Principal component analysis and distribution of results of RICHII administration to the full sample (N= 55).
Results: Several original items were modified and two new items («inappropriate euphoria» and «affective unstableness») were incorporated, as well as a new, graded scoring system. Feasibility, internal consistency (Cronbach’s alfa= 0.94), inter-rater reliability (n= 40, kappa= 0.60) and test-retest reliability (n= 25, kappa= 0.70) were quite acceptable. Four factors emerged in the factor analysis, explaining a high percentage of the variance; they tend to reflect modern knowledge in the field and are judged to support the construct validity of the RICHII. More than two thirds of patients (70.9%) scored high in at least one of the items.
Conclusion: This is the first report about the reliability and validity of a «collateral» interview to assess posttraumatic, psychosocial frontal symptoms.
