Abstract:
The ‘Kiddie-Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia-Present and Lifetime’ (K SADS-PL) is an assessment and diagnostic semi-structured interview guide for children and
adolescents (age 6-18 years). K-SADS-PL assesses all the psychopathology of DSM-5 along with its
course. The psychometric properties of the translated and adapted manual of K-SADS-PL working
draft 2013 in Urdu are yet to be determined. So the objective of this study was to determine the inter rater reliability and parent-child agreement of the K-SADS-PL (Urdu) for school aged children (6-18
years old) of screen interview and five diagnostic supplements. The study was taken place in
Islamabad and Lahore, Pakistan from April 2018 to July 2019. Subjects (N=60) were taken from
community setting (N=45) and clinical setting (N=15) from the age range 6-18 years (M age= 11.95
and SD= 3.00). The subjects were recruited through convenience sampling technique. Out of 60
subjects 22 subjects were extracted for the inter-rater reliability analysis between two raters.
Children/adolescents and their parents were taken for the interviews (N=60) as two informants of the
study. Kappa statistics showed high agreement (95% to 100%) between two raters for screen interview
as well as for diagnostic supplements. An excellent strength of agreement for Depressive Disorder
(κ=.861; p =.0005), Oppositional Defiant Disorder current episode (κ=.861; p =.0005), Anxiety
disorders, Psychosis past episode and Conduct disorder (κ=1; p =.0005) was found. The parent child
agreement on all the diagnosis (both internalizing problems and externalizing problems) was found to
be congruent. The agreement on depressive disorders[χ²(1, N=60)= 40.8, p<0.05], anxiety
disorders[χ²(1, N=60)= 40.8, p<0.05], psychosis[χ²(1, N=60)= 40.8, p<0.05] and behavioral
disorders[χ²(1, N=60)= 40.8, p<0.05] was significantly positively correlated with the large effect size
(Cohen’s 1988). Results suggested that K-SADS-PL (Urdu) generates reliable child and adolescent psychological diagnosis.
