The Psychiatric Status Schedule for epidemiological research. Methodological considerations
R. L. Spitzer, J. Endicott, J. Cohen and J. Nee
The Psychiatric Status Schedule (PSS) was designed to improve the research
value of clinical judgments in the assessment of psychopathology. Although
constructed with data from psychiatric patients, it is also intended for
use in case finding, as in epidemiological studies of the general
population. Its usefulness for this purpose has been questioned on the
basis of the low internal consistency of many of the PSS scales in a
general population sample and strata thereof. We challenged this
methodological stance. Using the same data set, the PSS can be shown to
have validity for epidemiological use, in that it discriminates outpatients
from the general population and identifies psychiatric "cases" variously
defined.
