Development and psychometric analysis of the negative emotion screening scale for inpatients / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To develop a negative emotion screening scale for inpatients(NESSI) and test its validity and reliability.Methods:Based on our previous studies and the theory model of psychological stress, the original item pool was established through literature review, expert interviews and patient consultation.The first version of NESSI was constructed by Delphi method, then initially tested in 421 inpatients followed by the project analysis and reliability test. After those above, the formal scale was developed and tested in 318 inpatients followed by confirmatory factor analysis and reliability test.Finally, 7-item generalized anxiety disorder scale (GAD-7), 9-item patient health questionnaire (PHQ-9), anger state expression scale (SAS) and simplified Chinese version of fear of disease progression scale(FoP-Q-SF) were used to test the criterion validity.Results:After exploratory factor analysis, 17 items were retained in the final scale, which can be categorized into four dimensions fear of illness, depression, somatization and anger, which could explain 63.49% of the total variation.Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the fitting degree of each factor model was good and met the requirements of reference value (χ 2/ df=2.949, RMR=0.044, CFI=0.929, NFI=0.897, IFI=0.930, TLI=0.915, PGFI=0.655, RMSEA=0.078). The Cronbach's α coefficient of the total scale was 0.925, and the Cronbach's α coefficient of the four factors ranged from 0.762 to 0.898.The criterion validity showed that there was a significant positive correlation between the scale and the four criterion scales ( r= 0.574-0.805, all P<0.01). Conclusion:The NESSI scale has good reliability and validity, and can be used as a psychological problem screening tool among non-psychiatric inpatients.