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OCHS-EBS: 52-item parent form for children and adolescents aged 4-17, and 52-item youth form for adolescents aged 12-17; OCHS-EBS-B: 25-item parent form for children and adolescents aged 4-17; OCHS-EBS-T: 37-item version used by teachers and school professionals for children and adolescents aged 4-13
Primary: General mental health assessment Secondary: Other
OCHS-EBS: Generalized anxiety, separation anxiety, major depressive and social phobia disorder symptoms, attention deficit hyperactivity, oppositional defiant and conduct
OCHS-EBS-B: Emotional concerns, behavioural concerns, and attention concerns
OCHS-EBS-T: Attention deficit hyperactivity, oppositional defiant, conduct, generalized anxiety, major depressive and social phobia disorders
This measure is intended to assess common child/youth mental health concerns. It is designed as brief, easy to administer, self-completed symptom checklists.
The measure can be used for assessing mental health concerns and monitoring the mental health needs of children and youth in the general population and in mental health services settings. Additionally, it can be used for epidemiological studies in the general population and screening in clinical studies.
Children and adolescents ages 4-17 (parent version) and adolescents ages 12-17 (youth version)
Three-point Likert scale from 0 (never or not true) to 2 (often or very true)
7-10 minutes
None
No training is required to administer the OCHS-EBS scales.
OCHS-EBS & OCHS-EBS-T: can be scored as a total score, internalizing score, externalizing score, and individual disorder scores. To calculate the total score, all items are summed together. To calculate the scale scores for internalizing disorders, externalizing disorders and individual disorders, the items that make up the groupings can be summed together.
OCHS-EBS-B: can be scored as a total score and individual problem scores. To calculate the total score, all 25 items are summed together. To calculate the scale scores for individual problems, the items that make up the groupings can be summed together.
A scoring tool is available that produces population normed scores based on children and youth in the Ontario general population. Please contact duncanlj@mcmaster.ca to access the scoring tool.
The norms, reliability and validity statistics included in each measure profile are those reported by the author(s) of the measure. It is important to note that altering, adding or removing questions from a measure voids these reported statistics, possibly making the revised tool unreliable and invalid.
The sample included 10,802 children and youths aged between 4-19 from the 2014 Ontario Child Health Study, a representative sample of Ontario children and youth.
OCHS-EBS:
The authors reported internal reliability with Cronbach alpha coefficients of 0.62-0.87 for the parent/caregiver report (ages 4-11), 0.8-0.87 for the parent/caregiver report (ages 12-17) and 0.66-0.86 for the youth report (ages 12-17) (Boyle et al., 2019; Duncan et al., 2019).
They also reported test-retest Pearson’s r of 0.7-0.78 for the parent/caregiver report (ages 4-11), 0.7-0.87 for the parent/caregiver report (ages 12-17) and 0.66-0.86 for the youth report (ages 12-17) (Boyle et al., 2019; Duncan et al., 2019).
When used categorically, the authors reported there was no significant differences in test-retest reliability estimates between the OCHS-EBS and a structured standardized diagnostic interview, the MINI-KID-P (Boyle et al., 2019; Duncan et al., 2019).
OCHS-EBS-B:
The authors reported internal reliability coefficients with Cronbach alpha coefficients of 0.81-087 for the parent/caregiver report (ages 4-11) and 0.83-0.88 for the parent/caregiver report (ages 12-17) (Boyle et al., 2021).
The authors also reported test-retest Pearson’s r of 0.83-0.93 for the parent/caregiver report in the general population (ages 9-11), 0.85-0.89 for the parent/caregiver report in service users (ages 9-11), 0.81-0.86 for the parent/caregiver report in the general population (ages 12-19), and 0.84-0.91 for the parent/caregiver report in service users (ages 12-19) (Boyle et al., 2021).
When used categorically, the authors reported though only 5 of 12 comparisons met the criteria for statistical equivalence, the reliability of child psychiatric disorder classification were comparable between the OCHS-EBS-B and a structured standardized diagnostic interview, the MINI-KID-P (Boyle et al., 2021).
OCHS-EBS-T:
The authors reported Internal consistency reliability for all subscales exceeding 0.78, except for the conduct disorder scale in 12- to 13-year-olds (Duncan et al., 2022).
OCHS-EBS:
The authors reported evidence of content validity, internal convergent and discriminant validity (with the exception of youth-assessed conduct disorder scale). The authors noted that there were a few internal discriminant validity test failures that reflect the overlap of characteristics among the disorders. In addition, the authors reported evidence of external convergent and discriminant validity with scales of the independent MINI-KID disorder assessments in 81/84 comparisons of individual disorders. Exceptions occurred between disorders that had similar characteristics (Boyle et al., 2019; Duncan et al., 2019).
When used categorically, the authors reported evidence that the OCHS-EBS had similar levels of validity as a structured standardized diagnostic interview.
OCHS-EBS-B:
The authors reported evidence of internal convergent and discriminant validity. In addition, the authors reported evidence of external convergent and discriminant validity with scales of the independent MINI-KID disorder assessments in 8/12 comparisons of individual types of disorders. The authors noted that there were four external discriminant validity test failures that reflect high within-instrument correlations between behavioural and attentional problems in the MINI-KID (Boyle et al., 2021).
When used categorically, the authors reported evidence that the validity of the OCHS-EBS-B and MINI-KID-P for classifying child psychiatric disorder assessed by parents were comparable. High levels of agreement between the two instruments were achieved after correcting for attenuation due to measurement error (Boyle et al., 2021).
OCHS-EBS-T:
Evidence of internal convergent validity was demonstrated in all cases. Discriminant validity was demonstrated in 27 out of 30 correlation comparisons. External convergent and discriminant validity was demonstrated when comparing the OCHS-EBS-T to a parent/caregiver measure of disorders in 48 out of 60 correlation comparisons.
