A COMPARISON OF 3 ASSESSMENT INSTRUMENTS FOR OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE SYMPTOMS

The psychometric characteristics and relationships among the Leyton Ob sessional Inventory, Maudsley Obsessional-Compulsive Inventory, and Ya le-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale were examined in a sample of 30 ob sessive-compulsive patients diagnosed using a structured interview. Th e majority of the subscales of the various measures were found to have good internal consistency across gender and the mean scores were simi lar to those reported in other studies. There were also moderate corre lations between several of the measures and clinician ratings of depre ssion. The results suggest that (1) gender differences should be furth er explored in future research (2) caution should be used when extrapo lating the results of treatment studies that use different OCD measure s, and (3) a measure of depression should always be included in OCD st udies to control for the possible effects of depressed mood.