Cutting a Long Story Short? The Clinical Relevance of Asking Parents, Nurses, and Young Children Themselves to Identify Children’s Mental Health Problems by One or Two Questions

Table 4

The odds ratios (OR) for child outcomes related to the combined effects of the parent’s and nurse’s one-question screen and the child’s self-evaluation of emotional well-being as well as child’s gender and age group. The OR for the variables remaining in the model at the last step of each backwards stepwise logistic regression are shown.

Variables entered into each model	Computer-predicted prevalence^1; ( = 68)	Rater-assigned child psychiatric ICD-10 diagnosis
		Any; ( = 117)	Emotional; ( = 53)	Conduct; ( = 41)	Hyperactivity; ( = 32)	Other^2; ( = 23)	Situational factors^3; ( = 38)
	OR; (95% CI)	OR; (95% CI)	OR; (95% CI)	OR; (95% CI)	OR; (95% CI)	OR; (95% CI)	OR; (95% CI)
Parent’s one-question screen^4	6.7; (3.6–12.7)	4.3; (2.5–7.4)	2.7; (1.3–5.5)	4.4; (2.0–9.6)	2.1; (0.9–5.1)	4.7; (1.7–13.0)	4.0; (1.8–8.9)
Nurse’s one-question screen^4	6.6; (3.5–12.5)	7.1; (4.1–12.1)	2.9; (1.4–5.9)	4.9; (2.3–10.7)	20.9; (7.2–60.4)	3.1; (1.1–8.4)	3.5; (1.6–7.7)
Child’s self-evaluation^4; (combined)		2.1; (1.0–4.6)	2.7; (1.2–6.2)				2.9; (1.1–7.4)
Child’s gender^5			2.3; (1.3–4.3)		0.4; (0.1–1.1)
Child’s age^6		1.8; (1.1–2.9)				2.5; (1.0–6.2)
Gender age	—^7					—^7

Prevalence level <75%/≥75%.
²Tic/Tourette, pervasive developmental disorders, and not otherwise specified mental disorders.
³Factors influencing health status and contact with health services (ICD-10): Z61 problems related to negative life events in childhood, Z62 other problems related to upbringing, and Z63 other problems related to primary support group, including family circumstances.
⁴No or mild difficulties/concerns versus more severe options.
⁵Girls versus boys.
⁶School-aged versus preschool children.
⁷The variable remained in the model but OR could not be computed because there were too few cases in some of the subgroups.
< 0.05.
< 0.001.