ABSTRACT
Objective: Develop and validate the Behavioral Assessment Screening Tool for Adolescents with brain injury.
Setting: Concussion clinics
Participants: Adolescents with mild traumatic brain injury 3 months after initial concussion clinic visit (n = 138).
Design: Assessment development and validation (cross-sectional cohort) study
Main Measures: Behavioral Assessment Screening Tool – Adolescent
Results: Expert panel members added or modified items specific to adolescents to the original Behavioral Assessment Screening Tool for adults. The Content Validity Index was 97.2%. Exploratory factor analysis of the Behavioral Assessment Screening Tool – Adolescent reduced the initial 70 items to 46 primary items with a 3-factor solution: Negative Affect & Fatigue, Executive & Social Function, and Risk Behaviors. Internal consistency reliabilities ranged from good to excellent for all factors (Cronbach’s α =.80-.95). We retained four secondary maladaptive coping items (from an initial six), though these require further modification and testing (Cronbach’s α =.67).
Conclusion: The Behavioral Assessment Screening Tool for Adolescents, a measure of neurobehavioral symptoms after mild traumatic brain injury in adolescents, has a multidimensional factor structure with evidence of good internal consistency reliabilities. Future work will further evaluate its convergent and discriminant validity and employ item response theory analyses for validation in a new sample of adolescents with concussion.
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the contributions of our expert panel members and the adolescents and their families who are part of our ConTex registry.
Declaration of interest
The authors report no conflicts of interest.