Peer-reviewed article
Optimal cutoff value of the Japanese shortened version of the Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC) youth self-report.
Higuchi T, Ishizaki Y, Uenishi H, Yanagimoto Y, Ono M et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study tested a shortened Japanese version of a screening tool designed to identify psychosocial problems in children and adolescents. Researchers compared scores from 52 patients with known psychosocial problems to 64 schoolchildren without known problems, all aged around 13 years. The tool showed moderate ability to distinguish between the two groups, with a recommended cutoff score between 12 and 13. The authors suggest this tool could help schools identify students needing early mental health support.
Key points
- Patient group scores were significantly higher than control group scores across all measured factors
- Area Under the Curve of 0.755 indicates moderate predictive performance
- Optimal cutoff score of 12-13 identified as clinically appropriate for screening
- Tool is brief and based on youth self-report rather than observer ratings
- Study conducted in Osaka, Japan between July 2020 and September 2022
Limitations
The study uses a relatively small sample size and compares only patients already identified with problems to schoolchildren, which may not reflect how the tool performs in actual school-wide screening. The moderate predictive performance (AUC 0.755) means the tool will miss some children with problems and identify some without them.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC) is a brief questionnaire aimed at detecting psychosocial problems of children and adolescents for intervention in the early stage. Though we have devised a 17-item version of the PSC-Youth Self-Report (PSC-17-Y) Japanese version, our subsequent goal was to evaluate its adequacy by comparing the scores of patients and of schoolchildren for the prevention and early intervention of schoolchildren’s psychosocial problems. METHODS: This study was conducted in Osaka, Japan’s second-largest city, between July 2020 and September 2022, during which participants completed the Japanese version of the PSC-17-Y (JPSC-17-Y). The participants were 52 patients with psychosocial problems (23 boys and 29 girls; mean age, 13.6 years) and 64 age-matched schoolchildren (24 boys and 40 girls; mean age, 13.4 years). The total score and each factor score of the JPSC-17-Y were compared, with the Mann-Whitney U test used to examine the differences between the groups. RESULTS: The results showed that the patient group’s scores were significantly higher than the control group’s for all factors and the total score. To estimate the cutoff value for differentiating between the control group and the patient group using the total score of the JPSC-17-Y, the Area Under the Curve (AUC) of the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve was calculated. The AUC was 0.755, indicating a moderate level of predictive performance for the JPSC-17-Y. The cutoff value of the total score between 12 and 13 was considered clinically appropriate. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that the JPSC-17-Y can lead to prevention of and early intervention for psychosocial problems of schoolchildren.