The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale—Spanish Adaptation

The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) consists of a formalized clinical interview and 30 operationally defined items for psychopathology assessment. We report here on the psychometric equivalence of a Spanish language adaptation (PANSS-S), developed to facilitate minority group, multinational, and cross-cultural studies on schizophrenia. Two bilingual psychiatrists simultaneously rated 57 psychiatric inpatients using the PANSS (N = 20), PANSS-S (N = 20), or both methods (N = 17). The PANSS-S demonstrated sound interrater reliabilities (r = .93 for positive and .74 for negative syndrome, p less than .001), which were similar to those from the current PANSS assessment and original standardization studies. In support of criterion-related validity, the means and variance of the two instruments were comparable, and significant cross-correlations were obtained for the principal scales (r = .92 for positive and .83 for negative syndrome, p less than .0001), component symptoms, and five additional psychopathology clusters. The results suggest that the PANSS-S has psychometric properties resembling those of the PANSS and may be used interchangeably in a Spanish-speaking population.