Two-stage screening for stressful life events and chronic difficulties.

Abstract
Starting from the premise that an interview approach rather than a checklist approach is the better method of assessing severe life events and difficulties, the study was designed to determine if, nevertheless, administering a checklist before the interview would enable an investigator to screen out individuals who had no experienced on event or difficulty. The subjects were 93 women selected using a stratified random selection procedure from a sample of 809 women, aged 18 to 65, attending their family physicians. With the interview as the criterion, the checklist assessed stressful life events with a sensitivity of .89; specificity was .57; positive predictive value was .27; and negative predictive value was .97. The corresponding figures for the assessment of chronic difficulties were .86, .55, .20, and .97. When the results were recalculated for the total sample, sensitivity and specificity were .88 and .67, respectively, for life events and .75 and .75 for chronic difficulties. The high negative predictive values indicated the value in terms of efficency of using a checklist before administering an interview.

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