Abstract
Little is known about the performance of clinician-administered structured diagnostic interviews when given under variable levels of examiner training and monitoring. We sought to explore this question. We examined the performance of a self-report questionnaire and a structured clinical interview in the assessment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in two community samples of war veterans. One sample was interviewed under standard conditions (N = 372) and the other under unknown and less standardized conditions (N = 420), more closely approximating 'field conditions'. Interview results were used to predict questionnaire-based PTSD status. Kappas, sensitivities, specificities, and positive predictive powers were moderate and of similar magnitude in both samples. Our results suggest that even under uncertain ('field') conditions, clinician-administered structured interviews can produce results comparable to those produced under more tightly controlled conditions.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 57-63 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research |
Volume | 15 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2006 |
Keywords
- Clinical assessment
- PTSD
- Structured interview