extended · article · 2019

Construct validity of a service-setting based measure to identify mental health problems in infancy

Janni Ammitzbøll; Anne Mette Skovgaard; Bjørn Evald Holstein; Anette Andersen; Svend Kreiner; Tine Nielsen

Accumulating research document the needs of intervention towards mental health problems in early childhood. The general child health surveillance offers opportunities for early detection of mental health vulnerability, conditioned the availability of feasible and validated measures. The Copenhagen Infant Mental Health Questionnaire, CIMHQ, was developed to be feasible for community health nurses and comprehensive regarding the range of mental health problems seen in infancy. Previous testing of the CIMHQ has documented feasibility and face validity. The aim was to investigate the construct validity of the general population measure by using the Rasch measurement models, and to explore the differential functioning of the CIMHQ relative to a number of characteristics of the infants, local independence of items, and possible latent classes of infants. CIMHQ was tested in 2,973 infants from ...