Validation of Home Screening Questionnaire (HSQ) against Home Observation for the Measurement of Environment (HOME).

This study was done to validate the screening tool Home Screening Questionnaire (HSQ) against the gold standard Home Observation for the Measurement of Environment (HOME) inventory, using diagnostic test evaluation. Both HOME inventory and HSQ were administered by separate observers, with children less than 3 years of age, among 200 families belonging to 14 anganwadi areas. There was a high sensitivity of 83 and a high specificity of 82 observed for a cutoff point of less than or equal to 19 on HSQ against HOME Inventory as Gold Standard, as was also observed in the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve. The likelihood ratio (LR) for positive test was 4.6 (95 % CI, 3.3 to 6.9) which implies that the families with poor home environment are 4.6 times more likely to have the HSQ score less than or equal to 19 as compared to normal families. The results of this study imply that we can confidently apply the HSQ in developmental evaluation clinics and reserve HOME inventory for research purposes.