Knowledge of Problem Solving (KOPS) Scale: Design and Evaluation of a Digitally Administered Competence Measure for a Common Practice Element in Task-Shared Youth Mental Health Interventions.

There are few reliable and feasible quality assurance methods to support scaling up of psychological interventions delivered by non-specialist providers. This paper reports on the phased development and validation of a digitally administered Knowledge of Problem Solving (KOPS) measure to assess competencies associated with a "task-shared" problem-solving intervention for adolescents with diverse mental health problems in India. Phase 1 established key competencies required to deliver the intervention, followed by item generation for a corresponding knowledge-based competency measure that could be administered efficiently through e-learning systems. In phase 2, items were refined based on responses from an "experienced" reference sample comprising 17 existing counsellors with direct experience of the problem-solving intervention, and a "novice" sample with 14 untrained university students and NGO staff. In phase 3, we evaluated two parallel versions of the measure in a validation sample ( Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41347-023-00356-9.