Table 1 Key psychosocial outcomes to be measured
Instrument | Rationale/Outcome Measured | Components Used | Values |
|---|---|---|---|
Children’s Hope Scale [37] | Measures students’ hope, as related to their agency and pathways for meeting goals | 6-item scale | Average score on all six questions that may take a value from 1 to 6, with a higher score reflecting greater hope |
Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) [38] | Used to screen for poor dimensions of mental health | Two of the sub-scales from the original five: Peer Problems and Prosocial sub-scales | Each sub-scale may take value from 0 to 10, with a higher score reflecting greater peer problems relationships or more pro-social behaviors, respectively |
Measures resilience among children and adolescents while allowing for cultural variation across multiple settings, and has been previously validated with adolescents in refugee/asylum-seeking contexts | 12-item version of the original 28-item scale | May take a value from 12 to 36, with a higher value reflecting greater resilience | |
Hopkins Symptom Checklist [41] | Measures multiple dimensions of mental health, including depressive symptoms, symptoms of anxiety, and externalizing symptoms; has been previously validated with refugee/asylum-seeking adolescents in multiple languages | 37-item version of the original 58-item checklist | All sub-scales may take a value from 1 to 4, with a higher score reflecting greater symptomology |
Stressful Life Events checklist [42] | Measures exposure to eleven stressful lifetime events and experiences pertaining to drastic changes in the family in the last year | 12-item scale | May take a value from 0 to 12, with a higher value reflecting exposure to a greater number of events |
Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) [43, 44] | Measures perceived social support from three respective sources: friends, family, and a significant other; has been validated with multiple adolescent populations, including Arab American adolescents | 12-item scale | May take a value from 0 to 7, with a higher value reflecting greater perceived social support |
Psychological Sense of School Membership (PSSM) scale [20, 45] | Measures students’ sense of belonging in their school environment; has been used and validated with adolescent refugee/asylum-seeking populations in the U.S. | 18-item scale | May take a value from 18 to 90, with a higher value reflecting a greater sense of school belonging |