Reliability and validity of using a Brief Psychiatric Symptom Rating Scale in clinical practice.
To develop a reliable and valid psychiatric self-rating scale for use in medical practice, the authors modified Derogatis' Symptom Check List-90-R (SCL-90-R) and designed a shorter form, named Brief Symptom Rating Scale (BSRS). The BSRS comprises 50 items, which best reflect the original ten symptom dimensions and three indices of psychopathology from the SCL-90-R. The BSRS has been proven in different populations to have an excellent split-half reliability as well as good internal structure according to factor analysis. In addition, BSRS scores are highly correlated with the parental form SCL-90-R among medical populations for each symptom dimension and the three indices. The rate of accurate classification for BSRS between psychiatric and nonpsychiatric cases was 75.8%, with a sensitivity of 66.7% and a specificity of 86.7% by discriminant analysis based on 10 dimensional scores obtained from 1,638 subjects, randomly selected from the Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic, the Family Medicine Clinic and nonpsychiatric medical inpatients. Therefore, the BSRS is a satisfactory global measure and case-finding screening instrument for psychopathology in both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric medical settings.
Lee
M B
MB
Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Lee
Y J
YJ
Yen
L L
LL
Lin
M H
MH
Lue
B H
BH
D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis; D008875:Middle Aged; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales / Q000592:standards*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results