Validity and reliability of the Structured Clinical Interview for Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum (SCI-OBS) and of the Structured Clinical Interview for Social Phobia Spectrum (SCI-SHY)

This paper reports on the psychometric properties of the Structured Clinical Interview for Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum (SCI-OBS) and the Structured Clinical Interview for Social Phobia Spectrum (SCI-SHY). Interviews were administered to 135 patients with psychiatric disorders and 119 controls. During the same session, subjects were given the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI), the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS), the Checklist for Obsessions and Compulsions and the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS). Patients and raters also answered specific questions on acceptability and usefulness of the interviews. Inter-rater reliability was assessed by administering the interviews to 36 patients with psychiatric disorders and 12 controls. The internal consistency of all domains of the interviews was from moderate to substantial (Kuder-Richardson coefficient >0.60). Discriminant validity was excellent. The concurrent validity of the SCI-SHY versus the LSAS and of the SCI-OBS versus the Checklist for Obsessions and Compulsions was satisfactory. However, no association was found between Y-BOCS and the SCI-OBS domains. Inter-rater reliability was substantial. Both interviews were rated as meaningful and clear by most subjects. Raters' attitudes toward the utility of these interviews for understanding patients and their foreseeable use in their practice varied, but most were in favour of administering them as self-report instruments.