TRAINING AND QUALITY ASSURANCE WITH THE BRIEF PSYCHIATRIC RATING-SCALE - THE DRIFT BUSTERS

Despite the prominence of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) in psychiatric research, relatively little has been published about trai ning methods and procedures used to maintain consistency over time of interviewer style and inter-rater reliability. A training and quality assurance program, developed at the UCLA Clinical Research Center for Schizophrenia and Psychiatric Rehabilitation, has relied on an expande d manual with behavioral anchor points that are used when trainees vie w a series of videotaped BPRSs or conduct live BPRS interviews. Traine es with both advanced and predoctoral degrees were able to achieve and maintain high levels of reliability.