2021 · Review · English

Psychometrics and cultural adaptations of the Communities That Care Youth Survey: A systematic review.

Thurow, C. F., Nunes, C., & Schneider, D. R.

Thurow, C. F., Nunes, C., & Schneider, D. R. (2021). Psychometrics and cultural adaptations of the Communities That Care Youth Survey: A systematic review. Journal of Community Psychology, 49(7), 2892–2904. doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22529

Summary

Systematic review, following PRISMA, of the psychometric validations and cross-cultural adaptations of the Communities That Care Youth Survey (CTCYS), undertaken to prepare its Brazilian validation. Searches in PubMed, SpringerLink, Scopus and Web of Science yielded 20 eligible articles. Overall, construct-validity indices were adequate, and the risk and protective factor measures were equivalent across ethnic groups, genders and at-risk populations; reliability was good for most scales, averaging about 0.78. Adaptations from six countries produced partly satisfactory results, but generally weaker than the original US instrument or its adjustments to other US ethnic groups and subpopulations. The authors conclude that the survey can be a reliable and valid measure of risk and protection across cultures, while noting a gap in how cross-cultural adaptation processes are conducted and documented. For European CTC sites the review is the reference point for judging how much confidence a translated youth survey deserves.