Metric invariance, reliability, and validity of the Child Version of the Obsessive Compulsive Inventory (OCI-CV) in community and clinical samples

Abstract

The Obsessive Compulsive Inventory-Child Version (OCI-CV) is a well-established self-report assessment tool and is particularly recommended for the assessment of dimensions of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) symptomatology. Although previous studies have shown that the OCI-CV has good psychometric properties to assess dimensions of OCD in clinical and non-clinical samples, a number of aspects remain unexplored: factor invariance across clinical and non-clinical samples, the discriminative validity of the OCI-CV to differentiate clinical from non-clinical samples, and the need for more data concerning the translation and adaptation of the OCI-CV across cultures and languages. Thus, the aim of our study was to provide new data on the validation of the OCI-CV in two community-based samples (n¼2138) and clinical samples (n¼94) of participants between 10 and 18 years old. The results showed that the OCI-CV has a sound 6-factor structure (Doubting/Checking, Obsessing, Hoarding, Washing, Ordering, Neutralizing) with one second-order factor (general OCD symptomatology), metric invariance across clinical and non-clinical samples, good reliability in terms of internal consistency and temporal stability, significant correlations with other specific measures of OCD, and acceptable sensitivity and specificity for the detection of OCD. The OCI-CV is a well-established measure to assess obsessive–compulsive symptom dimensions in children and adolescents.