Validation of 28 and 15 item versions of the SCORE family assessment questionnaire with adult mental health service users

Abstract

The SCORE (Systemic Clinical Outcome and Routine Evaluation) is a 40‐item questionnaire for completion by family members 12 years and older to assess outcome in systemic therapy. Twenty‐eight and 15‐item short versions of the SCORE have previously been validated with samples containing some families attending adult mental health services and some attending child and adolescent services; or samples containing families exclusively from child and adolescent services. This study aimed to investigate psychometric properties of two short versions of the SCORE with a sample drawn exclusively from adult mental health services. Data were collected from 199 service users attending inpatient and outpatient adult mental health services in the south‐east of Ireland. Both instruments had good internal consistency reliability. They also showed construct and criterion validity, correlating with measures of global functioning, service need, and childhood trauma. The 28 and 15‐item versions of the SCORE are brief psychometrically robust family assessment instruments which may be used to evaluate systemic therapy with adult mental health service users. Practitioner points Brief 15 and 28‐item versions of the SCORE may be used to assess family adjustment, monitor progress and assess outcome in adult mental health cases The SCORE‐28 is in the appendix to Cahill et al . ( ). The SCORE‐15 and a 29‐item version that contains items for both the SCORE‐28 and SCORE‐15 is in Fay et al . ( ) A web‐based system for administering and scoring the SCORE‐15 and SCORE‐28 is available at this link: http://scorefamilyassessment.org/login.php