THE RELIABILITY AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BRIEF SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS

Background. Linguistic analysis is of great potential benefit to psych iatry as a research and assessment tool, but the skill and time it dem ands means that it has not been widely used. This paper describes a mu ch simplified form of syntactic analysis. Method. A detailed protocol for the Brief Syntactic Analysis (BSA) was written, based on earlier w ork by Morice and Ingram. Three psychiatrists were trained in its use, and inter-rater reliability established through independent ratings o f 12 transcripts taken from a mixed group of psychiatric patients and a group of non-psychiatric controls. Concurrent reliability of the BSA against the Morice and Ingram analysis was established by comparing m easures from the two methods on 16 transcripts of mixed patients. Resu lts. There were high levels of agreement between the three psychiatris ts and between the BSA and the Morice and Ingram analysis, although on e-way ANOVA indicated that for some variable's there were small but st atistically significant absolute differences between the two. The reas ons for this were discussed. A principal components analysis confirmed the presence of three factors corresponding closely to the three fami lies of linguistic variables. Conclusions. The results indicate that p sychiatrists can be trained to use a syntactic analysis with high leve ls of agreement. The BSA, which takes much less time to complete, prod uces measures that are comparable with the original analysis from whic h it was derived.