Test-retest reliability of a questionnaire focusing on the relationship between ADHD and college students' experience of being disciplined at home and school

Whenever a new questionnaire is developed, it is important for researchers to determine the validity and reliability of the new questionnaire. There are several ways to assess reliability with the most difficult and useful being test-retest. One aspect of the difficulty stems from the fact that the same subjects must be readministered the same questionnaire at a later date. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study is to assess the test-retest reliabili1y of a retrospective questionnaire designed to identify the relationship between ADHD and college students' experience being disciplined at home and school during childhood. The questionnaire consists of questions focusing on the 18 criteria of ADHD listed in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual IV (DSMIV) and the frequency of different types of discipline experienced at home and at school. The students will mark their responses for the criteria on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 representing an absence of symptom and 10 representing a complete presence of a symptom. The sample consists of 80 students enrolled in a general education class at a large southeastern university during the spring 2007 semester. To test the reliability of the questionnaire, it was administered to the same sample on two different occasions after a two week interval. The survey responses will be correlated and the resulting correlation will be interpreted as the reliability of the instrument. The results of this study will be used to examine the reliability of the survey instrument, and aid in further study of ADHD.