Validity and reliability of the langner psychiatric impairment scale in a Turkish student population

Abstract

ABSTRACT The extent of psychiatric disorder in the community, which largely depends on the definition of disorder, should be known, in order to respond to mental illenss. The sources of variation in psychiatric morbidity have been investigated and the major influence appears to be variation in the definition of disorder. There are essentially two different models for the definition of psychiatric disorder in community studies. The first is a diagnosis-based model, that is the threshold for psychiatric disorder is that at with a psychiatrist, would make a diagnosis of psychiatric disorder according to some system such as the International Classification of Diseases (Wing, Cooper and Sartor ious, İ974). It has been argued however that such an approach to the definition of psychiatric morbidity is too restrictive for community and general practice settings (Shepherd, 1977). An alternative and more useful approach is detecting nonspecific psychological stress with brief scales. VIThe Langner Psychiatric Impairment Scale is one of these brief scales, which has the primary aim of identifying populations with varying levels of psychopathology. The scale has been used in screening large populations for neurotic and psychosomatic symptoms and has been widely used with college populations. The aim of the present study was to test the applicability of the Langner Psychiatric Impairment Scale in a sample of two hundred eighty-one Turkish university students. The specific objectives of the study were, firstly to examine the internal reliability and the test- retest reliability of the Turkish version of the Langner Scale and secondly to investigate its concurrent validity, by examining differences in the scores of psychiatric and dental patients and to test its agreement with the psychiatrist's rating of psychopathology. The scale was applied to two hundred and ninety students within a few months in the Middle East Technical University. The analyses were carried out on two hundred and eighty-one students' scores because of nine dropouts. The results showed that the Langner Scale's internal and test-retest reliabilities were high. It differentiated between psychiatric and dental patients and VIIit showed agreement with the psychiatrist's rating of psychopatho 1 ogy. The findings were evaluated in light of methodological issues and the results were discussed with suggestions for future research. VIII