Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Artigo Produção Nacional Revisado por pares

BIBTEX RIS

The Brief Negative Symptom Scale: Validation in a multicenter Brazilian study

2018; Elsevier BV; Volume: 85; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.comppsych.2018.06.007

1532-8384

Heydrich Lopes Virgulino de Medeiros, Selene Cordeiro Vasconcelos, Hélio Elkis, Diana Martins, Raissa Miranda de Alexandria Leite, Ana Carla Leite de Albuquerque, Rosana Freitas, Maria Alice Scardoelli, Elaine Di Sarno, Isabel Cristina Napolitano, Graça Oliveira, Adriana Dias Barbosa Vizzotto, Antônio Medeiros Peregrino da Silva, Murilo Duarte da Costa Lima,

Mental Health and Psychiatry

Negative symptoms are a core feature of schizophrenia. The Brief Negative Symptom Scale (BNSS) is a scale developed to measure negative symptoms in schizophrenia.The present study aimed to examine the construct validity of BNSS, by using convergent and divergent validities as well as factor analysis, in a Brazilian sample of 111 outpatients diagnosed with schizophrenia by DSM-5. Patients were evaluated by the Brazilian version of the BNSS and positive and negative subscales of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS).Assessment of patients by both instruments revealed an excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.938) or inter-rater reliability (ICC = 0.92), as well as a strong correlation between BNSS and Marder negative PANSS (r = 0.866) and a weak correlation of the instrument with the positive PANSS (r = 0.292), thus characterizing convergent and discriminant validities, respectively. The exploratory factor analysis identified two distinct factors, namely, motivation/pleasure and emotional expressivity, accounting for 68.63% of the total variance.The study shows that the Brazilian version of the BNSS has adequate psychometric properties and is a reliable instrument for the assessment of negative symptoms in schizophrenia, either for clinical practice or research.