THE IMPULSIVITY RATING-SCALE (IRS) - PRELIMINARY-RESULTS

Until now, the instruments for the clinical evaluation of impulsivity have relied essentially on either personality inventories or to a less er extent on specific questionnaires. Therefore this paper presents th e preliminary results of a new rating scale: the Impulsivity Rating Sc ale (IRS). This is a 7-item hetero-evaluation of impulsivity based on the behaviour of the patient in usual life situations. The administrat ion of the scale is easy and short: 15 minutes. The IRS was tested in five different population samples: 31 impulsive inpatients, 36 adults with major depressive episode, 15 healthy control subjects, 56 smokers before and after one week of tobacco withdrawal, and 47 adolescent de pressed inpatients before and four weeks after antidepressant treatmen t. The results show good construct validity, good concurrent validity, good inter-rater reliability and sensitivity to change. A threshold o f 8 for the total score (range 0 to 21) gives good specificity and sen sitivity. The principal component analysis shows the existence of a ma in factor composed of all items, with lower correlation for two items which may belong to a second factor needing further investigations.