The inter-rater reliability of the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (form 2)

The Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GSS) is widely used, particularly in the preparation of court reports, to derive information on the memory, suggestibility and confabulation of criminal suspects, victims and witnesses. The inter-rater reliability of all these measures was assessed by three raters, using the data of 101 subjects who were tested on the parallel form of the scale (GSS2). The intra-class correlation coefficients for all the memory and suggestibility measures were both very high (.951-.996) and highly significant (p < .001 for all measures), indicating a high level of inter-rater reliability. In contrast, whilst still highly significant (p < .001), the correlations for confabulation on immediate and delayed recall were much lower (.724 and .803, respectively). Guidelines are provided to refine the scoring of memory and suggestibility and to clarify the definition of confabulation.