Validation of You're Welcome quality criteria for adolescent health services using data from national inpatient surveys in England

Purpose: Revised You're Welcome (YW) quality criteria for adolescent health services were published by the English Department of Health in 2011. These are the first national standards to include inpatient services and the first of their kind to be endorsed by the World Health Organization. This article investigates the relationship between the YW criteria and young people's overall satisfaction in national inpatient surveys.

Methods: We identified the most recent national surveys that contain adolescent data: the Inpatient Survey (IS) 2009 (ages 16-19 years) and the Young Patient Survey (YPS) 2004 (ages 12-17 years). Logistic regression was used to calculate the odds of increased overall satisfaction when YW criteria were met, adjusting for sex and use of health services. Spearman rank correlation coefficients were used to identify the 10 questions in each survey that best correlated with overall satisfaction. We assessed the degree to which these 10 items were included in the YW criteria.

Results: In all, 7,657 (12-17 years old) and 988 (16-19 years old) adolescents completed the YPS and the IS, respectively. Twenty-eight of 29 questions that mapped to YW criteria were significantly associated with overall satisfaction (IS = 14/15; YPS = 25/25; all p < .01). Of the 10 questions that best correlated with overall care rating, 9 mapped directly to YW criteria in the YPS, as did all 10 in the IS. Provider characteristics were the strongest correlates of the overall care rating.

Conclusion: Although limited by lack of data relating to access, publicity, and confidentiality, our study provides strong support for the face validity and content validity of the remaining YW quality criteria in inpatient settings.