Psychological adjustment and patient information in inflammatory bowel disease: development of two assessment instruments.

Research on the psychological adjustments that patients must make in living with inflammatory bowel disease, symptomatic and life-disrupting chronic illnesses, has been difficult to interpret because no standard measurement instruments of known reliability and validity have been available. Two studies are presented on the construction, validation and cross-validation of the two instruments measuring patient information and psychological adjustment in inflammatory bowel disease. Both scales were shown to be reliable on the basis of internal consistency. Convergent validity of the psychological adjustment scale with measures of self-esteem and social competence and with a measure of public self-consciousness was demonstrated, as was discriminant validity along the dimension of social desirability. Assumptions underlying the scales are discussed, and research and clinical applications are suggested.