Social anhedonia in Malaysian schizophrenia patients and healthy participants

The reduced capacity for social and interpersonal interactions, social anhedonia, is an important aspect of various psychiatric disorders, especially schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. The goal of the present study was to validate a Malay translation of the adult version of the Anticipatory and Consummatory Interpersonal Pleasure Scale (ACIPS; Gooding and Pflum, 2014), a relatively short and easy to administer indirect measure of social anhedonia. This cross-sectional study included 95 (47 male, 48 female) schizophrenia patients and 300 (77 male, 223 female) healthy subjects. Participants were given Malay versions of the ACIPS, Snaith Hamilton Pleasure Scale (SHAPS-M), and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-M). The ACIPS exhibited good internal consistency (Ordinal alpha = 0.966). Total ACIPS scores were inversely correlated with the BDI-M scores, and positively correlated with total SHAPS-M scores. Factor analysis yielded a three-factor solution which accounted for 52.06% of the variance. As expected, the schizophrenia patients scored significantly lower than the healthy community participants on the ACIPS, t(130) = 4.26, p < 0.001. The Malay translation of the ACIPS showed good concurrent validity and excellent internal consistency. Taken together, these data provide further validation for the utility of the ACIPS in a cross-cultural context.