[Use of the Symptom Validation Test BEVA in Social Medical Assessment]

The present study investigates whether the BEVA is suitable to detect negative response bias by claimants with psychosomatic symptoms in the social medical assessment. 107 claimants for disability pension to a psychosomatic disorder fulfilled the BEVA, SIMS and a sociodemographic questionnaire. The social medical examiners assess the credibility of the complaints representation. A Known-Group-Design and a Bootstrapping-Design was used to estimate the validity of the BEVA. For the external criterion SFSS the following psychometric characteristics for the BEVA could be determined: specificity=0.86, sensitivity=0.42, positive predictive value=0.81, negative predictive value=0.51. The interrater reliability estimates with Cohen κ=0.253. If the expert's assessments are chosen as external criterion following psychometric characteristics were estimated: specificity=0.71, sensitivity=0.32, positive predictive value=0.38, negative predictive value=0.66. The rater agreement is Cohen κ=0.031. The results show that the BEVA has an excellent specificity in the detection of negative response bias. This is highly desirable in terms of an ethically moral discussion. Furthermore, the study shows that - in addition to the expert estimates - further screenings can improve the assessment of negative response bias.