Ukrainian Application of the Children's Somatization Inventory: Psychometric Properties and Associations With Internalizing Symptoms

Leighann Litcher, Evelyn Bromet, Gabrielle Carlson, Thomas Gilbert, Natalia Panina, Evgenii Golovakha, Dmitry Goldgaber, Semyon Gluzman, Judy Garber

This paper examines the psychometric properties of the Children's Somatization Inventory (CSI) in 600 10-12-year old children in Kyiv, Ukraine, replicating and extending the original findings from a sample in Nashville, Tennessee (J. Garber et al. 1991). The Kyiv children had significantly lower CSI total scores and reported significantly fewer symptoms than the American children. The Kyiv mothers, however, reported significantly more somatization symptoms in their children than did the American mothers. A factor analysis of the children's data yielded four similar factors encompassing pseudoneurologic, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and pain/weakness symptoms. Consistent with the findings from the Nashville study, the CSI was significantly related to the children's self-reports of health and depressive and anxiety symptoms and to maternal reports of child depression and anxiety symptoms. In addition, although more children with the highest CSI scores (25+) reported various illness experiences than those with 0-1 symptoms, no differences were found in the school absentee records. Thus, the results were congruent with the findings of the Nashville study, indicating that the CSI reliably measured somatization in this Ukrainian sample.