Elaboración y validación de un instrumento de tamizaje para la evaluación y el diagnóstico de menores en riesgo de exclusión social

Abstract

This study presents in detail the process of elaboration and validation of CAREs as a screening instrument that can be used by teaching staff for the detection of cases that require in-depth diagnosis and specialized intervention and for the adaptation of the school program and its optimization in order to reduce the risk of social exclusion at school. The elaboration process was carried out using the Delphi technique, in which a total of 28 experts participated, 14 of them academics and the rest professionals who work with adolescents in their day-to-day. Over 3 rounds, it went from an initial battery of 286 items to 42 that make up the first version of the questionnaire. With this process we consider content validity and construct validity reached. To analyze the validation criteria, CAREs has been administered to a sample of 25 adolescents together with a specialized diagnostic battery made up of ADITEC, PAI-A, family APGAR, MESI, ETS, CUVINO and AVE to study the consistency of the results obtained. These results show that CAREs has a sensitivity of 1.00 and a specificity of 0.64, giving it a false-positive ratio range of 0.36 and a false-negative ratio of 0.00. After validation, a pilot application of the instrument was carried out to a sample of 71 adolescents. This process led us to eliminate item 40; therefore, the instrument final version is comprised by 41 items. With the results obtained, it can be affirmed that all those students who are at risk of social exclusion are detected by the screening and can be referred to specialized psycho-pedagogical services for their in-depth confirmatory diagnosis. In addition, the results obtained from the application of the instrument in educational centers, regardless of the subjects indicated as suspects at risk, may be useful for classroom tutors to select those topics for which there is a high presence in their classroom to program the tutoring sessions around them.