When selecting a screening instrument for anxiety and depression for high school students, the lowest acceptable reliability should be

When selecting a screening instrument for anxiety and depression for high school students, the lowest acceptable reliability should be

• A. 0.60
• B. 0.70
• C. 0.80
• D. 0.90

Answer: (C)

Reliability is about how consistently a measure assesses what it’s aiming to measure. When you choose a screening tool for anxiety and depression with high school students, you want scores that hold steady across items and time so that the tool’s determination of who might need further evaluation isn’t tossed around by randomness or measurement error. If reliability is too low, the instrument produces a lot of noise. That means many students could be labeled as at risk when they’re not, or conversely, truly at-risk students might be missed. For screening, you need enough consistency to make sensible triage decisions, not to rely on shaky results. Therefore, the lowest acceptable level is the one that professionals commonly regard as good reliability—high enough to support confident decisions about who should receive additional assessment, without demanding more precision than is typically feasible for screening.

Reliability is about how consistently a measure assesses what it’s aiming to measure. When you choose a screening tool for anxiety and depression with high school students, you want scores that hold steady across items and time so that the tool’s determination of who might need further evaluation isn’t tossed around by randomness or measurement error.

If reliability is too low, the instrument produces a lot of noise. That means many students could be labeled as at risk when they’re not, or conversely, truly at-risk students might be missed. For screening, you need enough consistency to make sensible triage decisions, not to rely on shaky results. Therefore, the lowest acceptable level is the one that professionals commonly regard as good reliability—high enough to support confident decisions about who should receive additional assessment, without demanding more precision than is typically feasible for screening.