Validation of a Turkish Version of the ICD-10 Symptom Rating (ISR)

Numerous psychiatric and psychosomatic clinics in Turkey and Germany use the Symptom Checklist 90 Revised (SCL-90-R) developed by Derogatis (1977) or the validated Turkish version by Dag (1991) for assessing psychological symptoms. Many patients informed us during numerous studies and visits to these clinics that this test with its 90 questions took too long and that they were unable to sufficiently concentrate on it. In the meantime, the much more economical ICD-10 Symptom Rating (ISR) (Tritt et al., 2008) self-rating questionnaire, comprising 29 questions, has been developed in Germany in 2008. In 2008 and 2009 we therefore decided to translate the ISR into Turkish, to analyse it for its reliability and validity and compare it with the SCL-90-R and the BDI. In an analysis of 277 Turkish subjects – 127 of whom were inpatients, 36 outpatients and 104 clinically unremarkable healthy participants – very good psychometric characteristics were achieved in terms of high internal consistency of individual, additional and overall scales. The results of the factor analysis conducted showed that the ISR Measure has satisfactory construct validity. In a random sample of inpatients, the Cronbach’s alpha values ranged from 0.66 (scale: Compulsive syndrome) to 0.93 (overall scale). The advantage of this instrument over BDI and SCL-90-R lies in its shorter processing time. The German version of the ISR promises lesser use of time and good empirical quality, which we double-checked with a translated Turkish version tested on persons of Turkish origin in Germany.