About

In collaboration with experts at the Social Interventions Research and Evaluation Network (SIREN), our team at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute conducted a systematic review to address the following research questions:

• To what degree have gold standard methods been used to develop multidomain social risk screening tools?
• What is the available psychometric evidence for social risk screening and tracking tools?
• What is the available pragmatic evidence for social risk screening and tracking tools?
• What is the relation between psychometric and pragmatic evidence?

This review focused on “multidomain” screening tools designed to assess multiple social risk factors. We operationalized “multidomain” as a tool that included at least one social risk assessment question in two or more of the following domains: economic stability, education, social and community context, health and clinical care, neighborhood and physical environment, and food. We developed these domains building on other taxonomies of social risk from the Kaiser Family Foundation, HealthyPeople 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, peer-reviewed literature, and expert input. The review protocol can be found in PROSPERO.

The pragmatic and psychometric properties of the tools included in the review were assessed based on criteria from the Psychometric and Pragmatic Evidence Rating Scale (PAPERS). Psychometric properties are characteristics of a measure that ensure it is reliable and valid, indicating the results of an assessment are well-grounded, justifiable, and meaningful. Pragmatic is defined as: designed to work under usual conditions, as opposed to ideal conditions; in other words, what actually works in real world settings.

The article Psychometric and Pragmatic Properties of Social Risk Screening Tools: A Systematic Review, published December 2019, describes our review process and full results in detail.​​​​​