Florida Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory and Children's Florida Obsessive Compulsive Inventory: A reliability generalization meta-analysis

Background: The Florida Obsessive Compulsive Inventory (FOCI) and its pediatric version, the Children's Florida Obsessive Compulsive Inventory (C-FOCI), are instruments for evaluating obsessive-compulsive symptomatology. Method: A reliability generalization meta-analysis was conducted to estimate an average reliability of the scores and to identify study characteristics that explained the heterogeneity among scores. Using Kuder-Richardson 20 (KR-20) and Cronbach's alpha, a total of 23 and 20 independent samples were included in the meta-analysis for the FOCI and C-FOCI. Results: We found an average KR-20 of 0.826 for the FOCI's Symptom Checklist and an alpha of 0.882 FOCI's Symptom Severity. An average KR-20 of 0.740 was found for the C-FOCI's Symptom Checklist, while an average alpha of 0.794 was found for the C-FOCI's Symptom Severity. Moderator analyses showed that the source of the coefficients (i.e., whether they were reported by the authors of the primary study or estimated by the meta-analysts) was an important variable for the FOCI Symptom Severity, and that the focus of the study (i.e., whether it was psychometric or applied) and the sample size were relevant for the C-FOCI Symptom Checklist. Conclusions: Considering that the FOCI and C-FOCI are scales characterized by their brevity and ease of use, and the reliabilities obtained here, both scales are well suited for screening purposes.