Instruments for the economical evaluation of psychiatric service systems: Methodological foundations of the European standardisation and the German adaptation: Objective

Objective: In the project "Cost-effectiveness of psychiatric service system s. A European comparison" a German version of instruments for the assessmen t of needs for services (CAN-EU), service satisfaction (VSSS-EU) relatives' burden of care (IEQ-EU) and costs of psychiatric services (CSSRI-EU) was d eveloped in close cooperation with the EPSILON Study group. Method: The Eng lish original versions of the instruments were translated into German and a back-translation into the original language was carried out by a second tr anslator. The back-translation was screened by the first author of the orig inal version. The German versions of all instruments were tested for compre hensibility and practicability by means of focus groups. The internal consi stency of all instruments were tested on a representative sample of 307 pat ients with schizophrenia according to ICD-10 F20. Test-retest reliability a nd inter-rater reliability was tested by a sub-sample of 50 patients. Resul ts: Psychometric properties of the translated instruments will be presented and discussed. Conclusions: Statistical methods for the assessment of the reliability coefficients were identical with those of the EPSILON study, th erefore the psychometric properties of the German version of the CAN-EU are directly comparable with the other European versions of the instrument.