Healthy Youth Are Reliable in Reporting Symptoms on a Graded Symptom Scale

CONTEXT: Clinicians often rely on the self-report symptoms of patients in making clinical decisions; hence it is important that these scales be reliable. OBJECTIVE: To determine the test-retest reliability of healthy youth in completing a graded symptom scale (GSS), modified from the Head Injury Scale Self-Report Concussion Symptoms Scale (HIS). DESIGN: Repeated-measures. SETTING: Middle school classroom. PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS: 126 middle school students. INTERVENTION: A survey consisting of a demographic and life events questionnaire and a GSS asking about symptom severity and duration. MAIN OUTCOMES MEASURES: Score for each symptom on the severity and duration scale and a total symptom score (TSS) and the total number of symptoms endorsed (TSE) from the severity scale. Responses on a life events questionnaire were also recorded. RESULTS: We found excellent reliability for TSS (ICC=.93) and TSE (ICC=.88) for the severity scale. We found moderate to excellent reliability on the individual symptoms of both the severity (ICC=.65-.89) and duration (ICC=56-.96) scales. CONCLUSIONS: Healthy youth can reliably self-report symptoms using a GSS. This patient-oriented outcome measure should be incorporated into more investigations in this age group.