Staff observation aggression scale, SOAS: Presentation and evaluation

TLDR

The study introduces and evaluates a new psychiatric report and rating scale for assessing the severity and frequency of aggressive behaviour. The scale is constructed from staff‑generated standardized aggression reports collected via a special form, enabling systematic scoring and analysis of aggressive incidents. The scale demonstrates good reliability and discriminates between different patterns of aggressive behaviour across patient groups, and its simplicity suggests it could be a useful tool for research on psychiatric inpatient aggression.

Abstract

ABSTRACT A new psychiatric report and rating scale assessing severity and frequency of aggressive behaviour is presented and evaluated. It is based on the staff's standardized reports of aggressive incidents. By using a special aggression report form, comprehensive and standardized information is obtained, thereby permitting scoring and further analysis of different aspects of aggressive incidents. The reliability of scoring is tested and found to be good as is the scale's capacity to discriminate between different patterns of aggressive behaviour in different groups of patients. As a result of this and because of the simplicity of the scale, it is thought to be a potentially useful tool in scientific research on aggressive behaviour from psychiatric inpatients.