Date of Award

2008

Degree Type

Thesis

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Poreh, Amir

Subject Headings

Schizophrenics, Insight, Schizophrenia -- Diagnosis, Insight, Schizophrenia, Self-Report

Abstract

The use of self-report measures in the assessment of schizophrenic patients has yielded mixed results because many patients lack insight. The Positive and Negative Symptoms Questionnaire (PNS-Q-Self) is a self-report measure for the assessment of insight in schizophrenia symptoms. The present study extended this measure by assessing an informant version of this scale, the PNS-Q-Informant. This was achieved by administering the PNS-Q-Self and the PNS-Q-Informant together with the McEvoy Vignettes (McEvoy, 1989). The results show that both the PNS-Q-Self and the PNS-Q-Informant exhibit high internal consistency for both positive and negative subscales. The correlations between the two scales were mixed, with a significant correlation between the positive scales, but not the negative scales. However, both questionnaires correlated highly with the McEvoy Vignettes. The results from the t-test show only two deficit areas in schizophrenic patients, one in positive symptoms and one in negative symptoms, which may be due to the stabilized population used for data collection. The results of this study suggest that the use of both PNS-Q scales is an economic manner for objectively assessing insight into symptoms of schizophrenic patients

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