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Updated: Jul 4, 2026

Assessment and Evaluation of the High Risk Neonate: The NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale
Published on: August 25, 2014
Development and clinical validation of the short version of the NIMHANS-NMHS-2 disability scale
T S Jaisoorya1, J Lakshmi1, V S Binu2
1Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.
Background And Aim:
This study reports the development of the 8-item NIMHANS-NMHS-2 Disability Scale-Short Version (NNDS-SV) from the 13-item NIMHANS-NMHS-2 Disability Scale (NNDS), aiming to reduce the administration time without compromising its psychometric properties.
Methods:
An 8-item version was derived from the original 13-item NNDS via expert consensus and high response frequencies. Secondary analysis of the original validation data examined correlations between the NNDS-SV with the NNDS, WHO Disability Assessment Schedule (WHODAS 2.0), and the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS). Independent clinical validation of the NNDS-SV was then undertaken.
Results:
In secondary analysis, the NNDS-SV correlated strongly with the NNDS (rho = 0.988), WHO-DAS (rho = 0.918), and BPRS (rho = 0.792). Independent clinical validation (n-81) confirmed high concurrent validity with WHODAS (rho = 0.94) and discriminant validity with BPRS (rho = 0.80) with a reduced administration time of 4-6 minutes.
Conclusion:
The NNDS-SV demonstrates robust psychometric properties and is optimized for large-scale epidemiological studies and has been used in NMHS-2.

