PMID- 15812093
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 20050810
LR  - 20191210
IS  - 1075-2730 (Print)
IS  - 1075-2730 (Linking)
VI  - 56
IP  - 4
DP  - 2005 Apr
TI  - Reliability of global assessment of functioning ratings made by clinical 
      psychiatric staff.
PG  - 434-8
AB  - OBJECTIVE: In the Swedish psychiatric care system, systematic follow-up of 
      clinical work with patients is becoming a part of regular service, and a number 
      of care providers are using the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) to measure 
      outcomes. This study investigated the reliability of the GAF and analyzed certain 
      factors that affect measurement errors when the scale is used by regular 
      psychiatric staff. METHODS: Eighty-one raters from various psychiatric outpatient 
      clinics rated eight case vignettes. Interrater reliability was assessed by using 
      intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs), and factors associated with 
      reliability were analyzed by using raters' unique residual values. RESULTS: The 
      results showed that staff who are responsible for assessing first-time patients 
      at outpatient psychiatric clinics and making diagnoses are using the GAF with 
      satisfactory reliability (ICC(1,1)=.81). The factors associated with reliability 
      were raters' subjective attitude toward the GAF and motivation to use the scale 
      and other measurement instruments in psychiatry. CONCLUSIONS: GAF ratings made by 
      an individual rater can be used to measure changes and outcomes at the group 
      level. However, the measurement error is too large for assessment of change for 
      an individual patient, in which case it might be necessary to use several raters. 
      If raters are positively inclined to use rating instruments, measurement errors 
      are minimized and reliability is maximized.
FAU - Soderberg, Per
AU  - Soderberg P
AD  - Psychiatric Research and Development Department of Sater, Sweden. 
      per.soderberg@ltdalarna.se
FAU - Tungstrom, Stefan
AU  - Tungstrom S
FAU - Armelius, Bengt Ake
AU  - Armelius BA
LA  - eng
PT  - Journal Article
PT  - Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
PT  - Validation Study
PL  - United States
TA  - Psychiatr Serv
JT  - Psychiatric services (Washington, D.C.)
JID - 9502838
SB  - IM
MH  - Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
MH  - Follow-Up Studies
MH  - *Health Personnel
MH  - Humans
MH  - Mental Disorders/*diagnosis/*epidemiology
MH  - Observer Variation
MH  - Reproducibility of Results
MH  - Severity of Illness Index
MH  - *Surveys and Questionnaires
EDAT- 2005/04/07 09:00
MHDA- 2005/08/11 09:00
CRDT- 2005/04/07 09:00
PHST- 2005/04/07 09:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2005/08/11 09:00 [medline]
PHST- 2005/04/07 09:00 [entrez]
AID - 56/4/434 [pii]
AID - 10.1176/appi.ps.56.4.434 [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO  - Psychiatr Serv. 2005 Apr;56(4):434-8. doi: 10.1176/appi.ps.56.4.434.