Michelle Nuttall and Dr. Gary Burlingame, Psychology
The Youth Outcome Questionnaire (Y-OQ) was developed by a group of professors at Brigham Young University to offer professionals in psychology an outcome measure for children between the ages of 4 and 17. This measure was to be easy to administer, quick to fill out and score, and cost effective. The main attribute it had to contain was a sensitivity to change that would allow the clinician and others the ability to track progress and monitor change in a specific individual. The result of this endeavor was the Youth Outcome Questionnaire, a 64 item parent report measure that takes about 15 minutes to complete and score.
A normative sample was developed using the English version and proved that the measure was psychometrically sound for English speaking children and parents. However as the popularity of this measure grew there was a demand for it to be translated so it could be used internationally. Through a rigorous process of translation followed by back translation by both academic scholars and native speakers a Spanish version was developed.
To maintain the high reliability and validity the English version of the Y-OQ we wanted to develop Spanish norms. We hoped to use Hispanic populations from various areas of the country to represent the different ethnic groups that speak Spanish. These children in the sample would be from a normal population whose parents or guardians spoke Spanish.
Schools in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods seem to be the most likely choice because most children would be considered normal. We were able to choose two sites. The first was a school in Midvale, Utah where approximately 100 measures were collected, that included children from the age range of 5-12. The second site was a school district in San Jose, California. We collected 500 measures from that site that included the age range of 5- 14. Although this is not a perfectly representative sample, by having two sites we have a much broader representation of the different Hispanic cultures and are not limited to just one state.
The process to get this sample was very complicated because we had to get permission from each school to participate in the study. In order to gain this approval we offered reimbursement for the schools of one dollar for each measure completed. This money was used by the schools for equipment for the children and this study was viewed as a fund raising venture. Also we sent out a total of 2500 measures and received only 600 measures back showing the lack of interest and follow through by the parents. The money from this grant was used to both reimburse the schools, pay for the supplies that were used, and to pay for the cost of shipping, communication and travel time needed to have the site in California.
The most time consuming task for this project, the entry of data and analysis, has not been completed 220 due to large amounts of data collected. In most research a sample size of 100 is large, so to have a total of 600 is considered enormous. This will only strengthen our results in terms of reliability and validity.
While gaining permission from schools to conduct the study a concern was expressed with the problem of the time to enter the data. A scannable Y-OQ was developed that eliminated a lot of the data entry time. This process of developing a scannable program delayed our project and we were not able to send out the measures in enough time to allow completion in time for this report. In order to get a working scannable program we used an outside company which developed the format and data repository for analysis. This was a delay we did not plan on but has been a good endeavor because we are now able enter data quickly and this will be a benefit to future research involving any forms of the Youth Outcome Questionnaire.
Presently we have collected all the data and are working on entering it in. Once it is entered we will be able to do a complete analysis and develop separate norms for the Spanish version of the Y-OQ. This is very unusual in psychology because we have found very little norms that were developed for a specific cultural group, such as the Hispanic population. We expect to find that there will be some significant differences between the English and Spanish populations. This has been supported by past research and our own preliminary analysis.
We have entered and analyzed the date from the Utah sample. We found that the reliability for this sample to be .9 which is very high and is statistically significant. This matches the English reliability. The cross validity was very high when compared to the English norms. However there were significant differences between genders. The English sample showed little difference between male and females in terms of total scores, however the Spanish showed that females scored higher than males at a statistically significant level. Although we still need to analyze the remaining data, but if this trend continues we will have to develop different norms for the genders to accommodate these differences.
This project has gained a lot of interest from professionals in psychology due to its involvement with the Hispanic population. My mentor presented it briefly at the Society of Psychotherapy Research this year and it generated interest worldwide. People from Spanish speaking countries are excited for an instrument they can use that has been tested in the language rather than just a translated version using English norms. Also people in other parts of the US will use this instrument when dealing with their Hispanic clients. There is a lack of research dealing with this population, so clinicians appreciate any research on this topic. Due to the increase of Hispanics in the United States there is also an increase in Hispanic mental health patients; however the amount of research involving Hispanics is not increasing proportionally creating a large demand for any information on Hispanic. We hope that our study will cultivate further research to explore our findings more in depth, and therefore create a positive change in therapy for Hispanics. The norms that we will develop will change the therapeutic process with Hispanics because the norms used for comparison will be correct for the patient unlike now since we presently use the English norms. We hope that by the end of this year we will be able to publish these norms and implement the Spanish Y-OQ as a psychometrically sound instrument with its own norms.