Session: Systematic Psychometric Systematic Review Lending to Convergence to Measurement Issues in Social Work Research with Children (Society for Social Work and Research 25th Annual Conference - Social Work Science for Social Change)

Systematic reviews in social work research and education have been increasingly recognized for their utility in synthesizing a body of literature and informing clinical practice and interventions. Reviews bring convergence to areas of study and synthesize both intervention and correlational research. However, these reviews are rarely utilized to synthesize the array of psychometric evidence for particular measures or assessment tools across a body of literature.

The purpose of this symposium is to present systematic reviews of research literature and syntheses of psychometric evidence for particular measurement tools with children. Conducting a methodologically rigorous systematic review is challenging, even when the reviewed scientific literature is easily identified. Therefore, all presenters used novel web-based software for conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses, called Covidence. Here, four reviews of research literature were completed aiming to synthesize evidence around the psychometric quality of measurement tools for children. Results from each inform future research, use of the measure in research, and future research needs.

Too frequently, researchers cite a measure's original validation study and repeat these reliability coefficients and psychometric validity properties as evidence of applicability and suitability to a current sample of interest. Researchers may be unaware of more recent uses of a measure, studies reporting conflicting psychometric evidence concerning its quality, and subsequent psychometric validation studies. Each of the four systematic reviews in this symposium highlight this and other deficits in the validation of measures for use with children.

The first paper searched for and synthesized the current research literature using the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Young Children (TSCYC) identified 21 studies. While evidence generally supported the measure across studies, sampling issues raised concerns over using the TSCYC as a comprehensive measure of traumatic stress in young children. The second paper conducted a similar review of the Child and Adolescent Trauma Screen (CATS) from 13 studies finding deficits in reliability and validity evidence especially when using the measure within samples of younger children. The next systematic review of the Devereaux Early Childhood Assessment for Infants and Toddlers found little re-examination of the validity or reliability evidence following the original validation this measure of socioemotional protective factors in children. Lastly, a review of the PedsQL-Transplant Module, a measure of disease-specific health-related quality of life in children, found a lack of evidence for factor validity and the measure's ability to predict important and specific health outcomes in children with a transplanted organ.

Systematic reviews on specific measures offer social work researchers the ability to synthesize current psychometric evidence. Rigorous and efficient reviews can be accomplished through the integration of new technologies that streamline and facilitate review procedures. Systematic reviews findings can be used to provide the highest level of evidence to guide measurement practices in social work research and inform future research on the utility of particular measures. The papers presented in this symposium have implication for the consideration of psychometric evidence across large bodies of literature, informing future research with child populations, and for doctoral education surrounding psychometric and measurement methodologies in social work research.fied by 73.19.161.1 on 5-8-2020-->