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

Abstract

The Communities That Care Youth Survey (CTCYS) is an assessment for youth risk and protective factors focused on antisocial behaviors, drug abuse, violence, and delinquency. The systematic review aimed to analyze psychometric validations and cross-cultural adaptation processes of CTCYS to prepare its Brazilian validation. PubMed, SpringerLink, Scopus, and Web of Science were the databases included. The study followed the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) protocol. Twenty articles were selected based on the inclusion/exclusion criteria. In general, the construct validity indexes were considered adequate, and the measures of risk and protective factors were equivalent between ethnic groups, gender, and populations at risk. Reliability values for most scales are good, averaging about 0.78. We found cultural adaptations from six different countries with some satisfactory results, but not so good as the original properties of CTCYS and the adjustments to other ethnic groups or subpopulations in the United States. This survey may be a potentially reliable and valid instrument to assess risk and protection in different cultures and populations. However, there is still a gap in the instrument's cross-cultural adaptation processes.