Aim: Elaboration of a brief scale for screening of perception of self-influence on the course of schizophrenia, which could be used during usual psychiatric examination.
Methods: Group focus interview of patients with favourable and unfavourable course of schizophrenia led do the formulation of the 57 items Likert's scale. The study of 403 persons with schizophrenia, assessed by their psychiatrists as having low or high perception of self-influence on the course of schizophrenia resulted in a choice of 5 items that had the strongest power of discrimination of those two groups of patients. The psychometric proprieties were assessed in the group of 90 patients with schizophrenia.
Results: The reliability Alfa Cronbach = 0.78 and validity (r = 0.45) assessed by correlations with the clinical assessment
Conclusions: Brief measure to assess perception of self-influence on the disease course--Version for schizophrenia has good reliability, acceptable validity and can be used for screening of patients with low perception of self-influence on the disease course.