Rasch Validation and Cross-validation of the Health of Nation Outcome Scales (HoNOS) for Monitoring of Psychiatric Disability in Traumatized Refugees in Western Psychiatric Care

TY - JOUR

T1 - Rasch Validation and Cross-validation of the Health of Nation Outcome Scales (HoNOS) for Monitoring of Psychiatric Disability in Traumatized Refugees in Western Psychiatric Care

AU - Palic, Sabina

AU - Kappel, Michelle Lind

AU - Makransky, Guido

N1 - Published online before print July 24, 2015

PY - 2016/12/1

Y1 - 2016/12/1

N2 - There are no validated measures of psychiatric disability for traumatized refugees in Western psychiatric care. This is a serious shortcoming as it precludes monitoring of global treatment outcomes in this group, as well as appropriate matching of treatment needs to the disability levels. Using Rasch analysis we evaluated the psychometrics of the Health of Nation Outcome Scales (HoNOS) in pre-treatment data of consecutive refugee patients (N = 448) from a Danish psychiatric clinic. Then, we carried out a cross-validation of the pre-treatment HoNOS model on post-treatment data from the same group. A revised 10-item HoNOS fit the Rasch model at pre-treatment, and also showed excellent fit within the cross-validation data. Culture, gender, and need for translation did not exert serious bias on the measure’s performance. The results establish good monitoring properties of the 10-item HoNOS as the first validated measure of psychiatric disability for traumatized refugees in Western psychiatric care.

AB - There are no validated measures of psychiatric disability for traumatized refugees in Western psychiatric care. This is a serious shortcoming as it precludes monitoring of global treatment outcomes in this group, as well as appropriate matching of treatment needs to the disability levels. Using Rasch analysis we evaluated the psychometrics of the Health of Nation Outcome Scales (HoNOS) in pre-treatment data of consecutive refugee patients (N = 448) from a Danish psychiatric clinic. Then, we carried out a cross-validation of the pre-treatment HoNOS model on post-treatment data from the same group. A revised 10-item HoNOS fit the Rasch model at pre-treatment, and also showed excellent fit within the cross-validation data. Culture, gender, and need for translation did not exert serious bias on the measure’s performance. The results establish good monitoring properties of the 10-item HoNOS as the first validated measure of psychiatric disability for traumatized refugees in Western psychiatric care.

U2 - 10.1177/1073191115594690

DO - 10.1177/1073191115594690

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 26209512

SN - 1073-1911

VL - 23

SP - 734

EP - 743

JO - Assessment

JF - Assessment

IS - 6

ER -