[Psychometric properties of the French version of the Wender Utah Rating Scale and Brown's Attention Deficit Disorders Scale for adults]

Abstract

Objectives: The objective of this work was to analyse the factorial structure of the two following instruments: (1) the Wender Utah Rating Scale (WURS) evaluates the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD) for adults, with 25 items: the subjects describe their own childhood behaviour when they were 7 years old, (from few to very much, 0 to 4). The items are grouped in four clusters: affects and emotional problems; impulsivity and conduct disorders; impulsivity-hyperactivity; and difficulties in attention. A score of 46 or more strongly suggests diagnosis of a hyperactivity disorder during infancy; (2) Brown's (1996) Attention Deficit Disorders Scale (ADD) is a 40-item self-report. This scale is composed of a range of symptoms beyond the DSM-IV inattention criteria for ADHD. A score of 50 or more is strongly suggestive of ADD. The five clusters of this scale are: organizing and activating work; sustaining attention and concentration; sustaining energy and effort; managing affective interference; utilizing "working memory" and accessing recall.

Methods: For comparative purpose, we also used the Adult Self-Report Scale (ASRS), which evaluates ADHD with six items and accepts a cut-off of four or more; the Barratt Impulsivity Scale, and the Personality Inventory Revised, essentially with the neuroticism cluster. A total of 259 adult subjects were enrolled in this study and allocated to three groups: healthy subjects, depressive patients and alcoholic patients.

Results: This study indicates that the internal consistency for the French version of the ADD and WURS scales is adequate (α=0.8-0.9). The WURS and ADD scales are not fully validated, as both sensitivity to change and concurrent validity for all groups are missing. However, these adapted versions are interesting because they facilitate the use of the questionnaires for research and clinical assessment within healthy general and clinical populations. The study confirmed the psychometric properties of the two scales evaluating ADHD: Wender's Hyperactivity Scale during childhood and Brown's Attention Deficit Disorder Scale for adults (ADD). A larger patient sample would permit clearer conclusions. Nevertheless, the obtained results are very encouraging.

Discussion: The ASRS has already been validated. It has shown its utility as a screening tool (well correlated with the Brown's ADD Scale) and gives us a better understanding of the nature of difficulties met by patients in terms of attention. We would like to complete this study in the short-term by increasing the patient sample size and harmonizing evaluation instruments by applying the three scales (ADD, WURS and ASRS) within the three groups. Our results support the idea that the clinical population showed an elevated presence of ADD and this disorder needs to be assessed.