(PS9-18) Developing Norms for a Statewide System of Care: Leveraging Ohio Scales Youth Internalizing Scores in Clinical and Community Samples

Measurement feedback systems (MFS) for ongoing outcome monitoring and treatment planning are essential quality assurance tools for large mental health systems of care. The Ohio Scales (OS) Youth Problem Severity scale (Ogles et al., 2014) was selected by Hawai‘i’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Division (CAMHD) as a monthly measure of youth self-reported problem behaviors and one component of the MFS. Little research has been done to develop OS cutoff scores based on clinical populations (TDMHMR, 2003), especially in a large system of care serving a substantial portion of minority, multiethnic, and indigenous youth. Toward the goal of examining the range of clinical and normative problem severity scores to develop community-based recommendations for interpreting the OS, a statewide survey including OS internalizing questions was administered to a community sample of public middle and high school students. The present study will examine the psychometric properties of OS internalizing scales using both clinical and community samples. These findings will provide OS norms to better guide behavioral health decision making and quality assurance efforts within this and other systems of care serving diverse youth.

            Clinical data from approximately 2,000 youth receiving treatment from Hawai‘i’s CAMHD, collected between 2014 and 2019, and community data (n = 4,010), collected from public school students administered the 2019 Youth Tobacco Survey (Hawaiʻi Health Data Warehouse, 2019) will be examined. Youth receiving clinical services were 42% female with a mean age of 14.5 (SD = 1.98), and youth within the community sample were 49% female with a mean age of 15.0 (SD = 2.33). Descriptive analyses will be used to examine four subsamples, including community middle schoolers, community high schoolers, clinical middle schoolers, and clinical high schoolers. Measures of central tendency, internal consistency, and discriminant validity analyses will be considered in determining an OS internalizing clinical cutoff score for the local MFS. This study offers a method to utilize both (a) local aggregate data and (b) a regularly occurring, statewide community survey to produce community and clinical norms that can inform treatment progress monitoring and clinical decision making. This comes at a pivotal time, as this system of care attempts to develop and implement user-informed clinical dashboards as part of their MFS, which involves the need for innovative and locally-relevant guidelines to promote use of the MFS among providers and enhance the quality of community-based youth mental health services.