Psychometric Properties of Translated Outcome Measures of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Psychosis in the Chinese Context

Objectives: Growing evidence supporting the use of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to improve outcomes in patients with psychosis has largely originated from American and European countries, its applicability and effectiveness in Chinese patients with psychosis is still under-explored. However, the lack of stable and reliable outcome measures to evaluate the effectiveness of CBT for patients with psychosis hinders further development of psychological intervention in patients with psychosis in the Chinese context. The present study therefore aims to translate selected outcomes measures developed in American and European countries to measure the effectiveness of CBT for psychosis into Chinese and evaluate their psychometric properties.

Methods: Thirty-three patients with residual psychotic symptoms were recruited in the Department of Psychiatry, Kowloon Hospital, Hong Kong. Participants were asked to complete a set of self-reported questionnaires twice with an interval of a week, including Beliefs About Voices Questionnaire-Revised (BAVQ-R), Beck Cognitive Insight Scale (BCIS) and Southampton Mindfulness Questionnaire (SMQ).

Results: The results found that the Chinese versions of BAVQ-R, BCIS and SMQ had excellent test-retest reliability with good to acceptable internal reliability.

Conclusions: Generally, all three translated outcome measures were found to be stable and reliable, and were ready for evaluating the effectiveness of cognitive therapy for psychosis in the Chinese population. Further discussions on scoring and interpretations of the Chinese version of SMQ were made.