Objective: Udvalg for Kliniske Undersøgelser Side Effect Rating Scale (UKU-SERS) is a clinician-rated semi-structured interview scale. It was developed for assessing the side effects of psychopharmacological medications. It is widely used all over the world. In the study, we aim to examined the psychometric properties of the Turkish version of the UKU-SERS in patients with chronic schizophrenia.
Methods: The patient sample consisted of 205 (82 female, 123 male) patients with schizophrenia under maintenance treatment. To investigate the internal consistency of the scale and its subscales, corrected item-total correlations were examined to establish the effect on the Cronbach coefficients and internal consistency. Factorial structure was investigated using the Principal Component Analysis.
Results: The internal consistency coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha) were 0.76 for female and 0.82 for male. Correlations of the items individually with the total scores were between 0.17-0.71. Exploratory factorial analysis and varimax rotation results showed that the scale provided a four-factor structure. Additionally, we confirmed the factorial validity by identifying a four-factor structure that explained 63.1-55.4% of the total variance.
Conclusions: Findings with respect to internal consistency, item-total correlation, and factorial structure for the UKU-SERS show that the scale is acceptable in terms of validity and reliability for the patients with schizophrenia in Turkey.