Construction and Initial Examination of Inter-Rater Reliability of a Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5-TR Sleep Disorders (SCISD)–Kid

Study Objectives: To construct and evaluate the inter-rater reliability of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5-TR Sleep Disorders–Kid (SCISD-Kid). Method: The SCISD-Kid was modeled on the adult SCISD-R and accounted for pediatric developmental and sociocultural factors. Fifty sleep-disturbed children (M_age = 11.9, SD = 2.9) and 50 caregivers responded to the final SCISD-Kid. Video recordings were double-scored to evaluate inter-rater reliability. Results: The final SCISD-Kid contained approximately 90 questions. Eight of the nine covered disorders had prevalence rates sufficient for analyses for both samples (i.e., k > 2). Inter-rater reliability was examined using Cohen kappa coefficients (κ); reliability estimates ranged from excellent to good. For youth, restless legs syndrome yielded the lowest reliability (.48), while nightmare disorder, narcolepsy, and NREM sleep arousal disorder–sleepwalking type showed the highest reliability (1.00). Across caregivers, NREM sleep arousal disorder–sleep terror type (.49) and hypersomnolence (.54) had the lowest reliability. In contrast, circadian rhythm–delayed sleep phase type, nightmare disorder, and NREM sleep arousal disorder–sleepwalking type showed the highest reliability (1.00). Conclusions: The SCISD-Kid is a promising tool for screening sleep disorders. It showed good to excellent reliability across both samples. Next steps for validation will be discussed.