The test-retest reliability and practice effects of the Ruff 2 & 7 Selective Attention Test in patients with schizophrenia

Method

1 Participants

Current Chronic inpatients with schizophrenia were recruited from the chronic wards at Taipei City Hospital, Songde Branch a psychiatric center in northern Taiwan between? and?. (請確認收案期間) The inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) individuals with diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder which confirmed by treating psychiatrists according to based on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, Text Revision, 4th edition (DSM-4-TR) (4請用羅馬數字)Fifth Edition (DSM-5) (Association, 2013); (2) keeping stable clinical condition and medical treatment (no psychiatric emergency and acute treatment records in the month prior to recruitment) during admission; (3) age more than 20 years old; and (4) agreement to participate this study Mini-mental state examination (MMSE) > 24 points.(?請確認是否有用MMSE評估認知篩檢) We excluded those participants if they showed The exclusion criteria were as follows: (1) schizophrenia with other diagnoses having a secondary diasnosis, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, attention deficit disorder, etc. (ex: depression, anxiety, substance abuse or ADHD, etc.); (2) mental retardation; (3) serious brain injury; and (4) who can’t finish the tests because of cognitive disability, low vision or poor hand function. For test-retest reliability of Ruff 2 & 7 Test, researchers ruled out the score differences of Clinical Global Impression Scale of Severity (CGI-S; Busner & Targum, 2007) more than zero between pre-test and post-test to ensure that each participant was stable in symptom. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants each inpatient before data collection. This study was approving All study procedures were approved by Taipei City Hospital the Research Ethics Committee (No.: TCHIRB-10605103) of the local psychiatric center. (請再次確認IRB編號)

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2 Symptom Measure

The CGI-S is a one-item and seven-point rating scale, usually used to evaluate severity of psychopathology in schizophrenia. The rater scores from 1 (normal) to 7 (among the most extremely in ill patients) according to observed behavior, reported symptom and function in the past seven days. This scale takes the rater only 1-2 minutes. (Busner & Targum, 2007). There are good correlations among in the CGI-S, the PANSS and the PSP (Nafee et al., 2012; Rabinowitz, Mehnert, & Eerderkens, 2006). There is also response in CGI-S (Leucht & Engel, 2005). The CGI-S will used in this study to ensure the participants are stable.

3 Procedure

The Ruff 2 & 7 Test was administered by a specially trained research assistant twice, at an interval of two weeks. The Ruff 2 & 7 Test was implemented in a quiet room without environmental disturbing. After the Ruff 2 & 7 Test finished within 24 hours, every participant would accept the assessment of CGI-S by trained clinical practitioners in mental health. The participants with stable CGI-S scores were included for further data analysis. All above demographic and clinical data was collected by researchers.

4 Data analysis

The Statistical Product and Service Solutions version 21.0 was used to perform statistic analysis.

4.1         Test-retest Reliability

Test-retest reliability was determined by Pearson r. We used the Pearson r to calculate their correlation coefficients that range from -1 to 1. The venue of r between 0 and ±0.25 was lack of correlation; range from 0 to 0.5 or -0.25 to -0.5 mean poor correlation; 0.5 to 0.75 or between -0.75 and -0.5 was good correlation; and range from 0.75 to 1 or -0.75 to -1 was very good correlation.

4.2         Practice Effect

The pair t test and effect size d were used to test. When t value arrive the statistic significance that there are practice effect. d ≧0.2, there is practice effect (Cohen, 1988).

Association, A. P. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5®): American Psychiatric Association.

Busner, J., & Targum, S. D. (2007). The Clinical Global Impressions Scale: Applying a Research Tool in Clinical Practice. Psychiatry (Edgmont), 4(7), 28–37.

Lan, C. M., Tsai, P. C., & Tan, M. Y. (2011). Validation of the ruff 2 and 7 selective attention test for outpatients with schizophrenia. Journal of Occupational Therapy Association R.O.C., 29(1), 28-45. doi:10.6594/JTOTA.2011.29(1).02

Leucht, S., & Engel, R. R. (2005). The Relative Sensitivity of the Clinical Global Impressions Scale and the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale in Antipsychotic Drug Trials. Neuropsychopharmacology, 31, 406. doi:10.1038/sj.npp.1300873 https://www.nature.com/articles/1300873#supplementary-information

 Nafees, B., de Jonge, P. v. H., Stull, D., Pascoe, K., Price, M., Clarke, A., & Turkington, D. (2012). Reliability and validity of the Personal and Social Performance scale in patients with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia research, 140, 71-76.

Rabinowitz, J., Mehnert, A., & Eerdekens, M. (2006). To what extent do the PANSS and CGI-S overlap? Journal of clinical psychopharmacology, 26, 303-307