Toward Assessment of Child Survivors of Restavèk in Haiti: Development and Evaluation of a Locally Adapted Psychosocial Assessment Instrument

The article appears in the January 2015 issue of the Slavery Today Journal. It opens by describing restavèk as a form of child domestic slavery in Haiti that affects an estimated 300,000 children. The author adapted the Youth Self-Report, a standardized instrument, to reflect mental health problems that emerged in an earlier qualitative study among the same population, producing the Youth Self-Report for Haiti. The work was financed by Equitas Group, with project oversight by Beyond Borders.

Interviewers assessed 75 children and youth at four study sites in Port-au-Prince, and 67 are included in the analysis. Cronbach's alpha scores were in the acceptable to good range for all scales, and test-retest reliability, based on 27 repeat interviews, was adequate for all scales and above .8 for the internalizing and total problems scales. Criterion validity could not be assessed because child and staff reports usually disagreed. The author recommends that the instrument be used as a screener and that all symptom items be retained pending a criterion validity study.