Validation of the Short Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder Screener (SOCS) in children and adolescents

BACKGROUND: The Short Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder Screener (SOCS) is recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence as a suitable and validated screening tool for 11- to 15-year olds. Despite its excellent sensitivity and specificity in detecting obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), it has limitations. AIMS: To empirically examine whether the SOCS is suitable for assessing OCD symptoms across a wide age range of children and adolescents and to provide new data about its psychometric properties. METHOD: Participants were 94 patients (9–19 years) with OCD, and 880 healthy controls. RESULTS: The results supported the SOCS’ unidimensional factor structure and metric invariance across samples. It showed good reliability in terms of internal consistency and temporal stability. Furthermore, it had significantly high correlations with other OCD measures and an acceptable sensitivity and specificity for detecting OCD. CONCLUSIONS: The SOCS is a brief screening tool suitable for detecting OCD in children and adolescents. DECLARATION OF INTEREST: None. COPYRIGHT AND USAGE: © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2015. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Non-Commercial, No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.