Turkish Validity Reliability of Udvalg for Kliniske Undersøgelser Side Effect Rating Scale in Patients with Chronic Schizophrenia

Objective: Udvalgfor Kliniske Undersøgelser Side Effect Rating Scale (UKU-SERS) is aclinician-rated semi-structured interview scale. It was developed for assessingthe side effects of psychopharmacological medications. It is widely used allover the world. In the study, we aim to examined the psychometric properties ofthe Turkish version of the UKU-SERS in patients with chronic schizophrenia.

Methods: Thepatient sample consisted of 205 (82 female, 123 male) patients withschizophrenia under maintenance treatment. To investigate the internalconsistency of the scale and its subscales, corrected item-total correlationswere examined to establish the effect on the Cronbach coefficients and internalconsistency. Factorial structure was investigated using the Principal ComponentAnalysis.

Results: Theinternal consistency coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha) were 0.76 for female and0.82 for male. Correlations of the items individually with the total scoreswere between 0.17-0.71. Exploratory factorial analysis and varimax rotationresults showed that the scale provided a four-factor structure. Additionally,we confirmed the factorial validity by identifying a four-factor structure thatexplained 63.1-55.4% of the total variance.

Conclusions: Findings with respectto internal consistency, item-total correlation, and factorial structure forthe UKU-SERS show that the scale is acceptable in terms of validity andreliability for the patients with schizophrenia in Turkey.