Need assessment in long-term psychiatric patients: Inter-rater reliability and test-retest reliability of the Danish version of the Camberwell Assessment of Need

Abstract

With the development of national and regional policies for health services, the necessity to develop instruments describing health needs in clearly defined population groups is attracting increasing interest, and these instruments are seen as an important dimension in the planning, development, and evaluation of services. In the mental health profession a new instrument, the Camberwell Assessment of Need (CAN), has been developed to assess the need for care of people with severe mental illness. In the assessment of need, the CAN reflects a broad definition of ?need for care?, including not only traditional medical care but also measures for restoring social skills and need for support in daily activities. In this study the inter-rater reliability (n=32 for patient interviews and n=12 for staff interviews) and the test-retest reliability (n=20) of the Danish version of the CAN were investigated. The inter-rater reliability and the test-retest reliability of the assessment of present needs was found to be good, measured both as total percentages of agreement, ranging from 100% to 91% (inter-rater) and from 100% to 79% (test-retest), and with the Cohen kappa. The CAN is an instrument with adequate reliability now established in separate studies in three different countries.