The Service Assessment for Children and Adolescents (SACA): adult and child reports

To describe differences in parent-child responses to the Service Assessment for Children and Adolescents (SACA).

Studies were done at UCLA and Washington University based on service-using and community subjects drawn from community households or public school student lists, respectively. Results are presented for 145 adult-youth pairs in which the youth was 11 or older.

The SACA adult-youth correspondence for lifetime use of any services, inpatient services, outpatient services, and school services ranged from fair to excellent (kappa = 0.43-0.86, with most at 0.61 or greater). Similarly, the SACA showed a good to excellent correspondence for services that had been used in the preceding year (kappa = 0.45-0.77, with most greater than 0.50). The parent-youth correspondence for use of specific service settings in the above generic categories ranged from poor to excellent (kappa = 0.25-0.83, with half at 0.50 or greater).

The SACA has better adult-youth correspondence than any service use questionnaire with published data, indicating that both adult and youth reports are not needed for all research on mental health services. This is especially encouraging news for researchers working with high-risk youth populations, in which a parent figure is often not available.