Psychometric Validation of the New Misophonia Screening List-Child and Youth and AMISOS-Y (Dutch Child- and Parent-Report Versions) for Assessing Misophonia in Youth

Child Psychiatry Hum Dev. 2024 Nov 14. doi: 10.1007/s10578-024-01781-4. Online ahead of print.

Abstract

Misophonia is a recently identified disorder of decreased sound tolerance that often originates in childhood. Currently, there is a lack of validated questionnaires for screening and assessing misophonia severity in children/adolescents. This paper presents an iterative validation process of two innovative (parallel child-/parent-reported) questionnaires: the Misophonia Screening List-Child and Youth for screening, and the Amsterdam Misophonia Scale-Youth (AMISOS-Y) for assessing misophonia severity in youth. After instrument refinement, we performed ROC curve, reliability, and principal component analyses, and assessed concurrent, convergent and divergent validity, on a combined sample (aged 8-18; clinical sample N = 94 youth, 95 parents; control group screening N = 197 youth, 56 parents; control group AMISOS-Y N = 192 youth, 55 parents). Both questionnaires were unidimensional and displayed excellent psychometric properties (α = 0.95-0.96). Future replication studies are needed in community and clinical samples to contribute to a unified diagnostic framework. Trial registered 09/2021: NL-OMON20775.

Keywords: AMISOS-Y; Adolescents; Children; Misophonia Screening List—Child and Youth; Misophonia questionnaire.