The perceived expressed emotion in staff scale

Recent research has highlighted the role of expressed emotion by ward staff in determining the well-being of psychiatric inpatients. Existing methods of assessing staff expressed emotion involve standardized interviews and are expensive and time-consuming. We report the development of a questionnaire measure of expressed emotion in staff as perceived by patients. In study 1, factor analysis of items administered to patients in a variety of settings led to the development of a questionnaire with three subscales: supportiveness, criticism and intrusiveness. In study 2, the test-retest reliability of the questionnaire was found to be adequate, and some evidence of concurrent validity for the scale was obtained against expressed emotion rated from staff speech samples. In study 3, the scale was shown to have good concurrent validity against the ward atmosphere scale, and scores were found to be independent of insight or experience of admission to hospital. The perceived expressed emotion in staff scale is a convenient measure, which may have utility for both research and clinical purposes.