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 2

Sensitivity, specificity, and positive (PPV) and negative (NPV) predictive values of the parent’s and nurse’s one-question screen and child’s self-evaluation questions (no or mild concerns/problems versus more severe options) calculated against the DAWBA computer-predicted prevalence level of any diagnosis (<75% versus ≥75%) in a sample of Finnish 4–9-year-old children.

	High prevalence level of diagnosis
	Total sample				Boys				Girls				Preschoolers				School-aged children
	Sens^1	Spec^2	PPV^3	NPV^4	Sens^1	Spec^2	PPV^3	NPV^4	Sens^1	Spec^2	PPV^3	NPV^4	Sens^1	Spec^2	PPV^3	NPV^4	Sens^1	Spec^2	PPV^3	NPV^4
	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%
Parent’s one-question screen	( = 637)				( = 423)				( = 214)				( = 424)				( = 213)
	68	87	41	95	73	86	45	96	50	89	30	95	70	90	44	96	65	82	39	93
Nurse’s one-question screen	( = 622)				( = 411)				( = 211)				( = 414)				( = 208)
	65	88	41	95	69	85	42	95	56	92	40	96	72	88	42	97	55	87	40	92
Child’s self-evaluation
How are you?	( = 629)				( = 418)				( = 211)				( = 418)				( = 211)
	7	98	26	89	8	97	25	88	6	99	33	92	10	97	29	91	3	98	20	86
What do you expect for     your near future?	( = 628)				( = 417)				( = 211)				( = 418)				( = 210)
	9	94	16	89	6	95	14	87	18	93	19	93	10	94	15	91	7	96	20	86
Combined Child’s self-evaluation	( = 629)				( = 418)				( = 211)				( = 418)				( = 211)
	14	93	20	90	13	93	21	88	18	93	19	93	18	92	19	91	10	95	23	86
Combined parent’s and nurse’s one-question screen	( = 613)				( = 405)				( = 208)				( = 407)				( = 206)
	79	80	34	97	85	77	36	97	61	84	27	96	84	82	35	98	72	75	32	94

Sensitivity; specificity; positive predictive value; negative predictive value.