The Clinical Interview Schedule – Revised (CIS-R) is a structured diagnostic measure developed from the Clinical Interview Schedule (CIS), a standardised interview designed to assess common mental disorders among community settings. The CIS was designed for use by clinical interviewers and required expert judgement to determine psychopathology. The CIS was standardised to enable interviewers without this expert knowledge to administer, the resulting CIS-R can thus be self-completed and returns results comparable to those from standardized interviews. The CIS-R has been validated across a number of populations and ages, and studies suggest that the instrument remains valid across a number of cultural settings and age groups. To date, little work has been done to validate the CIS-R administered using different modes of assessment.

Previously the CIS-R has been administered to ALSPAC participants via a computerised assessment during clinic time. To minimise participant burden during clinic time and maximise response rate to the CIS-R, it has been suggested that the assessment could be completed online, outside of the clinic. The CIS-R has not currently been validated as an online task, therefore we propose to investigate whether responses to this measure differ according to the setting in which it is completed, and whether it remains a valid diagnostic measure when completed online outside of the clinic setting.