Cutting a Long Story Short? The Clinical Relevance of Asking Parents, Nurses, and Young Children Themselves to Identify Children’s Mental Health Problems by One or Two Questions
Table 1
Distributions of answers in the parents’ and nurses’ one-question screen and child’s self-evaluation in a community sample of Finnish 4–9-year-old children.
Total sample
Preschoolers
School-aged children
All
Boys
Girls
df1
All
Boys
Girls
All
Boys
Girls
df1
%
%
%
2
%
%
%
%
%
%
3
Parent’s one-question screen
( = 2652)
( = 1295)
( = 1357)
80.79
( = 1757)
( = 867)
( = 890)
( = 895)
( = 428)
( = 467)
13.88
No difficulties
47.0
38.7
55.0
2
46.3
38.2
51.2
48.5
39.7
56.5
2
Not many difficulties
46.6
52.4
41.0
<0.001
48.4
54.4
42.6
43.0
48.4
30.1
0.001
Quite many/very many difficulties
6.4
8.9
4.0
5.3
7.4
3.3
8.5
11.9
5.4
Nurse’s one-question screen4
( = 2602)
( = 1269)
( = 1333)
81.73
( = 1722)
( = 847)
( = 875)
( = 880)
( = 422)
( = 458)
0.37
No difficulties
75.5
67.8
82.8
2
75.2
68.5
81.7
76.1
66.6
84.9
2
Yes—minor difficulties
17.7
22.5
13.1
<0.001
18.0
22.1
14.1
17.0
23.2
11.4
ns.
Yes—definite/severe difficulties
6.8
9.7
4.1
6.8
9.4
4.2
6.8
10.2
3.7
Child’s self-evaluation
How are you?
( = 2623)
( = 1287)
( = 1336)
22.86
( = 1739)
( = 860)
( = 879)
( = 884)
( = 427)
( = 457)
446.33
Very often happy
54.0
51.4
56.4
3
68.0
66.3
69.6
26.5
21.5
31.1
3
Quite often happy
28.9
28.0
29.7
<0.001
18.5
17.1
19.8
49.3
49.9
48.8
<0.001
Equally many happy and lousy moments
15.1
17.7
12.5
10.9
13.0
8.9
23.2
27.2
19.5
Often/almost always sad
2.1
2.9
1.3
2.6
3.6
1.7
1.0
1.4
0.7
What do you expect for your near future?
( = 2620)
( = 1284)
( = 1336)
10.16
( = 1737)
( = 858)
( = 879)
( = 883)
( = 426)
( = 457)
115.01
Very nice and happy days
50.1
48.5
51.6
3
55.8
55.4
56.3
38.8
34.7
42.7
3
Quite nice and happy days
29.4
28.8
30.0
<0.017
23.0
22.3
23.8
42.0
42.0
42.0
<0.001
Not bothering
15.7
18.0
13.5
15.4
17.0
13.9
16.2
20.0
12.7
Some/many bad things are going to happen
4.8
4.7
4.9
5.7
5.4
6.0
2.9
3.3
2.6
df: degrees of freedom.
2Tested between genders.
3Tested between age groups.
4Answering alternatives “do not know” and “cannot say” extracted from analyses ( = 80).
