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Reliability, Validity, and Classification Accuracy of a Spanish Translation of a Measure of DSM-IV Diagnostic Criteria for Pathological Gambling

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Abstract

The aim of this study was to measure the reliability, validity, and classification accuracy of a Spanish translation of a measure of DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for Pathological Gambling (PG). Participants were 263 male and 23 female patients seeking treatment for PG and a matched non-psychiatric control sample of 259 men and 24 women. A Spanish translation of a 19-item measure of DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for PG (Stinchfield 2003) was administered along with other validity measures. The DSM-IV diagnostic criteria were found to be internally consistent with a coefficient alpha of .95 in the combined sample. Evidence of satisfactory convergent validity included moderate to high correlations with other measures of problem gambling. Using the standard DSM-IV cut-score of five, the ten criteria were found to yield satisfactory classification accuracy results with a high hit rate (.95), high sensitivity (.92), high specificity (.99), low false positive (.01), and low false negative rate (.08). Lowering the cut score to four resulted in modest improvements in classification accuracy and reduced the false negative rate from .08 to .05. The Spanish translation of a measure of DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for PG demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties and a cut score of four improved diagnostic precision.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support was received from Fondo de Investigación Sanitaria of Spain (FIS: PI-040619; CIBER-CB06/03/0034) and Generalitat de Catalunya (2005SGR00322). We want to thank the support given by Prof. E. Jaurrieta (Medical Director HUB) and by Department of Cardiology (HUB) to this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital of Bellvitge, Barcelona, Spain

    S. Jiménez-Murcia, E. Álvarez-Moya, N. Jaurrieta, B. Bueno, M. N. Aymamí, M. Gómez-Peña, R. Martínez-Giménez, F. Fernández-Aranda & J. Vallejo

  2. CIBER Fisiopatología de la Obesidad y Nutrición (CIBEROBN), Instituto Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain

    S. Jiménez-Murcia & F. Fernández-Aranda

  3. Department of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota Medical School, 689 Fairmount Avenue, Saint Paul, MN, 55105, USA

    R. Stinchfield

  4. Department of Psychobiology and Methodology in Health Sciences, Faculty of Psychology, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    R. Granero

Authors
  1. S. Jiménez-Murcia
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  2. R. Stinchfield
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  3. E. Álvarez-Moya
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  4. N. Jaurrieta
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  5. B. Bueno
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  6. R. Granero
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  7. M. N. Aymamí
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  8. M. Gómez-Peña
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  9. R. Martínez-Giménez
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  10. F. Fernández-Aranda
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  11. J. Vallejo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to R. Stinchfield.

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Jiménez-Murcia, S., Stinchfield, R., Álvarez-Moya, E. et al. Reliability, Validity, and Classification Accuracy of a Spanish Translation of a Measure of DSM-IV Diagnostic Criteria for Pathological Gambling. J Gambl Stud 25, 93–104 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-008-9104-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-008-9104-x

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