The DAWBA is designed so that it doesn’t need to be administered by clinical child psychologists or psychiatrists. However, since the DAWBA is a detailed and comprehensive diagnostic assessment that covers many mental health issues, and also collects open-ended comments, it needs to be interpreted by well-trained professionals with substantial patient-based experience, or supervised by experienced child psychiatrists or clinical psychologists. The interviewers’ instructions were written to help familiarise interviewers with the DAWBA and to answer commonly asked questions.
Click here to view and download a complete set of interviewers’ instructions in English and various translations
Alternatively, you can look at the instructions section by section in English:
| The basic structure of each section | |
| Why do we always want to know about impact as well as about symptoms? | |
| Interviewing young people | |
| Section A: Separation anxiety | |
| Section B: Specific phobias | |
| Section C: Social phobia | |
| Section D: Panic attacks and Agoraphobia | |
| Section E: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | |
| Section F: Compulsions and obsessions | |
| Section G: Generalised anxiety | |
| Section H: Depression | |
| Deliberate self-harm (questions H22-H24) | |
| Section J: Attention and activity | |
| Section K: Awkward and troublesome behaviour | |
| Section L: Less common disorders | |
| Section M: Significant problems section | |
| Interviewers’ observations |