reliability

Cards (2)

P: despite the claims for increased reliability in DS3, over 30 years later there is still little evidence that DSM is routinely used with high reliability by mental health clinicians
E: Whaley found inter-rater reliability correlations in the diagnosis of schizophrenia as low as 0.11. Further problems with the inter-rater reliability of the diagnosis of schizophrenia are seen in the rosenhan study
L: this suggests that because psychiatric diagnosis lacks some of the more objective measures enjoyed by other branches of medicine, it faces additional challenges with inter-rate reliability
P: for a diagnosis of schizophrenia, only one of the characteristic symptoms is required. if delusions are bizarre. however, this creates problems for reliability of diagnosis
E: when 50 senior psychiatrists in the US were asked to differentiate between 'bizarre' and 'non-bizarre' delusions, they produce inter-rater reliability correlations of only 0.40
L: the researchers concluded that even this central diagnostic requirement lacks sufficient reliability for it to be a reliable method of distinguishing between schizophrenic and non schizophrenic patients