The Psychiatric Assessment Schedule for Adult with Developmental Disability (PAS-ADD) Checklist: reliability and validity of French version.
The French PAS-ADD Checklist is ready for routine screening in French-speaking ID services—expect more false negatives than the English version.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team translated the English PAS-ADD Checklist into French.
They gave the new form to the adults with intellectual disability and their caregivers.
Then they compared the checklist answers to full psychiatric exams to see if the screen caught real problems.
What they found
The French checklist agreed with doctors a large share of the time when no disorder was present.
It only caught a large share of true cases, so almost half of sick adults were missed.
Still, the tool is reliable enough for everyday screening in French services.
How this fits with other research
Prasher et al. (1995) tested the Reiss Screen 18 years earlier and also found good reliability, showing this line of work keeps building.
Sajith et al. (2008) used the CAARS for ADHD screening and got similar modest hit rates, so lower sensitivity is common when adapting adult scales for people with ID.
Cheves et al. (2026) created the OWLS-ID self-report distress scale and reached higher accuracy, but that tool asks the adult to answer alone—something many people with ID cannot do.
Why it matters
If you serve French-speaking adults with ID, you can start using this checklist today. Expect to miss some cases, so keep referring anyone who still worries you for full assessment.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: The lack of psychometric measures of psychopathology especially in intellectual disabilities (ID) population was addressed by creation of the Psychiatric Assessment Schedule for Adult with Developmental Disability (PAS-ADD-10) in Moss et al. This schedule is a structured interview designed for professionals in psychopathology. The PAS-ADD Checklist was created as a screening tool designed for non-specialists in mental illness, such as families and care staff. The Checklist includes 29 symptoms items graded on a four-point scale. When the score passes the threshold, this indicates the need for further psychiatric assessment. In a study by Moss et al. and a replication by Sturmey et al., the PAS-ADD Checklist was validated and proved reliable as a screening tool for psychiatric disorders in a population of adults with ID. In this study, the French translation of the Checklist is compared with the English version and the psychometric properties are presented for outpatients. METHOD: The French version was created by translation and back translation. Acceptability, internal consistency, inter-rater reliability, factorial analysis and sensitivity/specificity were calculated. RESULTS: Reliability analyses for sub-scales and threshold scales showed good (Cronbach's alpha coefficient greater than 0.7) to acceptable (alpha over 0.6) internal consistency. Cronbach's alpha was over 0.8 when the total scale was considered. Spearman Rank correlations, calculated for 45 pairs of raters on threshold scores, are above 0.66, which is a good sign of accordance between non-specialist raters. Sensitivity and specificity were computed for the number of participants who did and did not cross threshold and for whom a psychiatric disorder was or was not present. The sensitivity was 55% and specificity was 70%. The confirmatory factor analysis with a three-factor solution explained only 46.1%, which suggests a mediocre fit of the data to the model. Even if items have good saturation on each factor, it does not fit with the theoretical model. CONCLUSIONS: The validity of the French version in this sample seems to be acceptable. Specificity was higher than those reported in the English version and sensitivity was lower. The French version was less successful in screening than English version, probably because of the low number of false negatives in this sample, which constitutes recruitment bias in a psychiatric sample. Nevertheless, the French version of the PAS-ADD Checklist is reliable as a general screening tool for psychiatric disorders.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2013 · doi:10.1111/jir.12028