QUANTIFYING INTERVIEW DATA ON PSYCHIC IMPAIRMENT OF DISASTER SURVIVORS

Abstract

Interview reports on 381 adult survivors of a dam disaster were scaled multidimensionally for psychopathology by having reviewers rate each report using the Psychiatric Evaluation Form (PEF) developed by Spitzer and his associates. Two independent reports were available for each individual, one made by a neuropsychiatrist hired by the coal mining company (M reports), the other by one of several mental health professionals (UC reports) who interviewed the survivors for purposes of litigation. A preliminary study was made in which four raters were trained and then each scored 40 reports on 20 subjects. Estimates of scoring reliability were obtained for the major summary and cluster scales under differing assumptions regarding the number and manner of assignment of raters per protocol. Estimates ranged from .63 to .77, using one rater. This could be increased to .74 to .87 by using two randomly assigned raters, but would require 400 additional man-hours. Furthermore, our estimates indicated that correlations between the two reports would be only minimally improved by the increase in scoring reliability. Hence, it was decided to use only one rater per report and assign reports randomly to all available raters. Validity of the PEF scores in this context was assessed a) by obtaining correlations between scores on the two reports; b) by comparing profile of mean scores with published profiles for inpatient and outpatient samples; c) by obtaining correlations between the PEF and scores on a symptom checklist administered to 231 survivors at the time of the UC interviews. Correlations of summary cluster scales for protocols obtained on two occasions in different environs by interviewers with vastly different backgrounds and viewpoints and scored by different raters ranged from .28 to .38. All correlations with corresponding dimensions of the symptom checklist were highly significant. The mean score profile (M and UC scores averaged) appeared quite similar to that of an outpatient sample. It was concluded that the scores obtained were meaningful and useful for further studies to ascertain relations between aspects of the disaster and psychopathology.