The Turkish Validity and Reliability Study of the Observable Social Cognition -A Rating Scale for Patients with Schizophrenia.

Objective: The Observable Social Cognition-A Rating Scale (OSCARS) is an eight-item, interview-based psychometric tool that was developed by Healey et al. (2015) for evaluating social cognition with respect to the theory of mind, emotion perception, and attributional style in schizophrenia. The aim of this study is to determine the validity and reliability of the Turkish version of the scale.

Method: The study was conducted with 50 patients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder and 50 relatives of these patients using the OSCARS, the Face Emotion Discrimination/Identification Test (FEDT/FEIT), the Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale (PANSS), the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) and the Dokuz Eylül Theory of Mind Index (DEZIKO). The validity of the OSCARS was assessed by exploratory factor analysis and concurrent validity analysis, the reliability was demonstrated by the internal consistency coefficient, item-total item correlation, and test-retest comparisons.

Results: The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the OSCARS-TR was 0.83. Explanatory factor analysis yielded a 2-factor structure explaining 64.2% of the total variance of the scale. The total score of the OSCARSTR correlated significantly with the DEZIKO (r=-0.49), the GAF (r=- 0.50), the PANSS (r=0.54) and the FEDT (r=-0.29) total scores but not with the FEIT scores. The total scores of the OSCARS-TR completed by the patients and by the relatives of the patients correlated with statistical significance (r=0.93). The test-retest reliability coefficient of OSCARS-TR was 0.95.

Conclusion: The results demonstrated the validity and the reliability of the OSCARS-TR. The scale can be easily implemented on an interview basis as an appropriate tool for evaluating social cognition.