The Psychogeriatric Rating Scale: A Practical Tool for Assessment, Monitoring and Programme Development.

The development of the 50 item Psychogeriatric Rating Scale is described. Data is provided which show exceptionally high inter‐rater reliability between trained raters, ranging between 0.9 and 0.98 for the seven sub‐scales of Physical, Self Help, Confusion, Behaviour, Social, Psychiatric Observations and Nursing Dependency. Internal consistency of the scales is good, ranging from 0.68 to 0.93. Validity was assessed by comparing the Confusion scale with the Mini‐Mental Status Questionnaire (correlation = 0.84) and the Nursing Dependency scale with the Farr Dependency Scale (correlation = 0.74). All of the sub‐scales were foundto beableto discriminate between self care, hostel and nursing home groups in a large retirement village.