[Evaluation of auditory hallucinations: the PSYRATS scale].

INTRODUCTION

Translate and adapt the PSYRATS scale for evaluation of auditory hallucinations to Spanish and study the psychometric behavior.

METHOD: After being translated into Spanish, the scale was applied to a sample of 80 patients. All had a history of auditory hallucinations, 71 with Schizophrenia and 9 with schizoaffective disorder according to DSM-IV diagnostic criteria. Demographic and clinical data were collected by a semi-structured interview, tape recording the sessions for every patient. For the reliability study, 27 patients of the sample were evaluated independently by the first four auhors of this paper. For the study of concurrent validity the results of this scale were compared with those of the Krawiecka scale in 60 patients of the sample.

RESULTS

In the Spanish version, the 11 items were conserved with slight modifications in two of them. The scale showed high reliability with coefficients in the 11 items higher than 0.85. The concurrent validity showed high association between the hallucination item of the Krawiecka scale and the PSYRATS. In the factorial analysis four factors that explained 62% of the variance were obtained.

CONCLUSIONS

The Spanish version of the PSYRATS (for hallucinations) is, to our knowledge, the first scale adapted to Spanish for the study of auditory hallucinations, showing excellent psychometric properties.