Test-retest reliability of the Camberwell Assessment of Need (CAN)

Abstract

The Camberwell Assessment of Need (the CAN) is a widely used instrument in several countries to assess needs for the severely mentally ill. The instrument consists of ratings of needs made by patient and staff. This paper reports test-retest reliability for staff ratings in the Swedish version. Fifty-six patients, most of them with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, were interviewed by one person from the social services and by one from the psychiatric clinic. Afterwards the ratings were discussed and negotiated in order to arrive at one unanimous rating. The same procedure was replicated after 2-4 weeks. The intraclass correlation coefficient for the sum of needs was 0.93, and for the sum of unmet needs and met needs 0.80 for both. There were no means differences between the first and second rating. An analysis was also made of the test-retest scores of individual needs and subscales. The results in this study suggest that the summary scores of the CAN generally are reliable over time when using the method applied here. General conclusions about test-retest reliability for individual needs and subscales are more difficult to make and demand larger samples.

Patients’ Report of Help Provided by Relatives and Services to Meet Their Needs

“…It was developed at the London Institute of Psychiatry and has been employed in numerous countries. Its reliability has proven acceptable (Hansson et al 1995;Andresen et al 2000;Arvidsson 2003). A key advantage of the CAN is that it allows recording, either from patients or clinicians, patients' needs-here, only patients' perspective will be reported; in another paper (Fleury et al 2006), we compared both perspectives.…”

Components Associated with Adequacy of Help for Consumers with Severe Mental Disorders

“…Needs analysis was performed with the CAN (Phelan et al 1995). The reliability of the CAN has been tested in several countries and shown to be acceptable (Andresen et al 2000;Arvidsson 2003;Hansson et al 1995;Nielsen 1999). It exists in two versions: clinical and research (McCrone et al 2001).…”

The Life Situation of People with Persistent Mental Illness Visiting Day Centers: a Comparative Study

“…Met and unmet activity needs were assessed by four items (feeding, home management, hygiene and regular daily activities) from the Swedish version of the Camberwell Assessment of Need (CAN), shown to have good inter-rater agreement (Hansson, Bjorkman, & Svensson, 1995) and to be reliable over time (Arvidsson, 2003). Each need is rated according to problem level, amount of help received from relatives and friends, amount of help received from social and health services, amount of help needed from social and health services, whether adequate help is received or not, and being generally satisfied with received help or not.…”