A RATING INSTRUMENT FOR THE EVALUATION OF INPATIENT REHABILITATION PROGRAMS IN CHINA - RESULTS OF RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY TESTING

To objectively evaluate in-patient rehabilitation programmes in China, we developed a new rating scale: the Inpatient Psychiatric Rehabilita tion Outcome Scale (IPROS). The scale has five subscales: performance in occupational therapy, daily activities, socialisation, personal hyg iene, and level of interest in external events. Evaluators (physicians or nurses) observe patients for one week before coding items on a fiv e-point scale. Comparison of four independent evaluators' results for 32 schizophrenic patients assessed on two separate occasions indicated that the inter-rater and test-retest reliability for the overall]PROS score and for the five subscale scores was excellent (all ICC Values greater than or equal to 0.973). Validity was evaluated by comparing I PROS results with those of five other independently assessed clinical measures for 101 chronic schizophrenic patients before and after a six -month rehabilitation programme; concurrent validity and longitudinal validity were satisfactory (correlation coefficients 0.37-0.81, all P values < 0.01).