Original article
Reliability of the 1999 Youth Risk Behavior Survey Questionnaire

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Abstract

Purpose: To assess the test-retest reliability of the 1999 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) questionnaire.

Methods: A sample of 4619 male and female high school students from white, black, Hispanic, and other racial/ethnic groups completed the YRBS questionnaire on two occasions approximately two weeks apart. The questionnaire assesses a broad range of health risk behaviors. This study used a protocol that maintained anonymity yet allowed matching of Time-1 and Time-2 responses. The authors computed a kappa statistic for the 72 items measuring health risk behaviors, and compared group prevalence estimates at the two testing occasions.

Results: Kappas ranged from 23.6% to 90.5%, with a mean of 60.7% and a median of 60.0%. Kappas did not differ by gender, grade, or race/ethnicity of the respondent. About one in five items (22.2%) had significantly different prevalence estimates at Time 1 vs. Time 2. Ten items, or 13.9%, had both kappas below 61% and significantly different Time-1 and Time-2 prevalence estimates.

Conclusions: Overall, students appeared to report health risk behaviors reliably over time, but several items need to be examined further to determine whether they should be revised or deleted in future versions of the YRBS.

Section snippets

Sample

A convenience sample of respondents was drawn from 61 schools in 20 states plus the District of Columbia. Because the goal of sampling was to obtain a diverse group of respondents, the 20 states were geographically dispersed. In addition, 48% of the schools in the sample were in urban areas, 39% were in suburban areas, and 13% were in rural areas [14]. Selection of ninth- through 12th-grade classes within each volunteer school varied according to the school’s schedule. In about half of the

Results

Kappas ranged from 23.6% to 90.5%, with a mean of 60.7% and a median of 60.0% (Table 2). Using qualitative labels for values of kappa suggested by Landis and Koch [13], 47.2% of items had at least “substantial” reliability (kappas ≥61%), and 93.1% had at least “moderate” reliability (kappas ≥41%). Based on nonoverlapping 95% CIs, 22.2% of items had significantly different prevalence estimates at Time 1 vs. Time 2. Ten items, or 13.9%, had both kappas below 61% and significantly different Time-1

Discussion

Nearly all items on the YRBS questionnaire had at least “moderate” reliability and nearly half had “substantial” reliability. Several items, however, had low reliability and significantly different Time-1 vs. Time-2 prevalence estimates. These items need to be examined further to determine whether they should be revised or deleted in future versions of the YRBS.

The overall findings can be compared with those found in the reliability study of the original YRBS questionnaire [12], as well as the

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