The residential competency scale: A new measure of residential functioning skills

The Residential Competency Scale, an 82-item questionnaire, was developed as a molecular measure for assessing the community living skills of expsychiatric patients in residential care settings. Over the course of its development, normative data were collected on a sample of 251 residents from 24 residential facilities, and critical analyses were performed to examine such aspects as the scale's internal consistency, factorial structure, reliability (both interrater and test-retest), concurrent validity, and discriminant validity. The results were quite favorable and indicate that the Residential Competency Scale is multidimensional, internally consistent, and reliable. In addition, the scale identifies instrumental and psychosocial aspects of community living skills and discriminates relapsers from nonrelapsers.