@article{ref1,
title="Computerized Adaptive Test vs. decision trees: development of a support decision system to identify suicidal behavior",
journal="Journal of affective disorders",
year="2016",
author="Delgado-Gomez, D. and Baca-Garcia, E. and Aguado, D. and Courtet, Philippe and Lopez-Castroman, J.",
volume="206",
number="",
pages="204-209",
abstract="BACKGROUND: Several Computerized Adaptive Tests (CATs) have been proposed to facilitate assessments in mental health. These tests are built in a standard way, disregarding useful and usually available information not included in the assessment scales that could increase the precision and utility of CATs, such as the history of suicide attempts. <br><br>METHODS: Using the items of a previously developed scale for suicidal risk, we compared the performance of a standard CAT and a decision tree in a support decision system to identify suicidal behavior. We included the history of past suicide attempts as a class for the separation of patients in the decision tree. <br><br>RESULTS: The decision tree needed an average of four items to achieve a similar accuracy than a standard CAT with nine items. The accuracy of the decision tree, obtained after 25 cross-validations, was 81.4%. A shortened test adapted for the separation of suicidal and non-suicidal patients was developed. <br><br>CONCLUSION: CATs can be very useful tools for the assessment of suicidal risk. However, standard CATs do not use all the information that is available. A decision tree can improve the precision of the assessment since they are constructed using a priori information.<br><br>Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0165-0327",
doi="10.1016/j.jad.2016.07.032",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2016.07.032"
}