NCS-R Interview Schedule and Respondent Booklet

Notes and acknowledgements to all users:

The NCS-R interview schedule is an adaptation of the CIDI that used innovations developed in the UM-CIDI, the Munich version of the CIDI (M-CIDI), the WHO CIDI version 2.1, and the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for DSM-IV. As in the original UM-CIDI, the adaptation of the CIDI for NCS-R that was led by Ronald Kessler, with the assistance of the field supervisory staff at the Survey Research Center (SRC), University of Michigan and in close consultation with Bedirhan Ustun from the WHO. Hans-Ulrich Wittchen worked closely with Kessler in creating the sections on anxiety and mood disorders, while a number of other consultants played central roles in the development of other sections, as described in section notes. Beth-Ellen Pennell played an important role in supervising field-testing and modification of the draft instrument. Members of Pennell's staff at SRC who played especially important parts in instrument development include April Broule, Stephanie Chardoul, Karl Dinkelmann, Nancy Gebler, Lisa Holland, Nicole Kirgus, and Steve Pennell. Staff at Harvard Medical School (HMS) also played a valuable role in instrument development, testing, and modifications, including Jamie Gunnoe, Lori Rosenstein, Maura Purcell, and Noelle van Camp. An early version of the NCS-R instrument was used in a series of nationally representative CIDI surveys carried out in six European countries with the support of the European Union and GlaxoSmithKline. These six surveys are known as the ESEMeD surveys. The ESEMeD collaborators carried out important field-testing of the first draft of the NCS-R CAPI program.
The final version of the NCS-R instrument was subsequently used in other nationally or regionally representative general population surveys carried out throughout the work with coordination by the WHO. These surveys are known as the WHO World Mental Health (WMH) surveys. While NCS-R and the ESEMeD surveys were carried out using CAPI administration, a number of WMH surveys used PAPI. The instrument was modified in order to be suitable for PAPI administration. These modifications were made by the same collaborative UM-HMS team that created the original NCS-R instrument. A Direct Data Entry (DDE) computer program was developed in conjunction with the PAPI version of the instrument to provide quality control for data entry. The HMS collaborators also developed a number of programs for use in data checking and cleaning once PAPI surveys are completed.
A number of small, but important, changes were made to the WMH instrument as we gained more and more experience using it in the many surveys carried out in conjunction with the WMH initiative. The instruments posted on this web page include only the initial NCS-R version of the instrument. The WMH web page provides information on the various versions of the WMH instrument.

The Principal investigator of the NCS-R is Ronald Kessler Ph.D. Kessler is a Professor in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. The Co-PI is Kathleen Ries Merikangas Ph.D. Merikangas is the Chief of the Section on Developmental Genetic Epidemiology in the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program at the National Institute of Mental Health. She is also the Associate Director for Epidemiology at NIMH. Co-investigators are: Doreen Koretz, Ph.D. from the Division of Mental Disorders, Behavioral Research and AIDS, at the National Institute of Mental Health. David Offord M.D., Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at McMaster University in Ontario Canada. Mark Olfson M.D., M.P.H. Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY. Harold Pincus M.D., Senior Scientist at RAND and Director of the RAND-University of Pittsburgh Health Institute, and Executive Vice Chairman, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Philip Wang M.D., ScD., Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School and Assistant Professor in Medicine, Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Brigham and Women's Hospital. Kenneth Wells M.D., M.P.H., Professor-in-Residence of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA-NPI and Senior Scientist at RAND.

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