Reliability and validity of the self report symptom inventory (SRSI) in youth: An experimental study of feigned and careless responding

ABSTRACTObjective: This study evaluated the reliability and validity of the Self-Report Symptom Inventory(SRSI) in adolescents, aiming to determine whether the SRSI effectively distinguishes between validand distorted symptom reports under different instructed response conditions.Method: Eighty-eight adolescents, aged 12 to 17 years, from the Dutch-speaking general populationcompleted the SRSI twice: once under honest instructions, and once under one of four randomlyassigned conditions: honest (n = 24), feigning depression (n = 23), feigning pain (n = 22), or carelessresponding (n = 19). Internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and discriminative validity wereanalyzed. Exploratory analyses examined the impact of careless responding on SRSI scores and theutility of consistency items (i.e., positive health items) in differentiating between careless and feignedresponding.Results: The SRSI demonstrated high discriminative validity between honest and feigned responses,with specificity of .90 and sensitivity of .91 at the standard cutoff (> 9). When careless responseswere combined with feigned responses – both reflecting distorted symptom presentations –sensitivity decreased to .80. Internal consistency was high for both the genuine (α = .91) andpseudosymptoms (α = .81) scales, and test-retest reliability was high (n = 24; r = .93 and .88,respectively). Among careless responders, approximately 50% scored above the SRSI pseudosymptomsstandard cutoff. Exploratory findings suggest that endorsement of multiple consistency items afterfailing the SRSI may reflect careless rather than feigned responding.Conclusions: These initial findings support the potential utility of the SRSI as a symptom validitymeasure for adolescents. The lower specificity at the standard cutoff than that found in experimentalfeigning studies in adults (.90 vs. ≥ .95) suggests that the cutoff may need to be raised in youthsamples. Further validation in clinical populations is necessary before recommending its use inapplied settings.