Reliability and validity of the Greek version of the Derogatis Psychiatric Rating Scale (DPRS)

The aim of this paper is to report on the Greek version of the Derogatis Psychiatric Rating Scale (DPRS) and its validity and reliability when administered to a Greek sample. The DPRS is a clinician-rated measure of psychiatric symptoms with nine basic and eight complementary symptom dimensions and a Global Pathology Index.

The DPRS was translated into Greek and administered to 161 psychiatric patients and healthy volunteers. Its validity was assessed against the Semistructured Clinical Interview (SCID) and the Symptoms Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R). The inter-rater reliability and test-retest reliability were also evaluated for each symptom dimension.

All the symptom dimensions of the DPRS, except euphoria, have concurrent validity with the SCID on the relevant symptom dimensions diagnoses set by the interview. At the cut-off point 2/3 the DPRS has a sensitivity of 98% and a specificity of 74% in indicating active psychiatric patients. The symptom dimensions of the DPRS also have strong correlations with the relevant dimensions of SCL-90-R. The range for inter-rater reliability was from 0.48 to 0.88, the range for test-retest reliability was from 0.25 to 0.85, and the internal consistency was 0.90.

The Greek version of the DPRS has acceptable psychometric properties, rendering it a useful screening instrument of global psychopathology as well as a multidimensional measure of some basic psychiatric symptoms.