Edinburgh Napier University

  Family interventions based on the principles of behavioural and cognitive therapy, delivered for more than three months or 10–15 sessions have proved efficacious in reducing relapses and re-hospitalisation for people with schizophrenia. They are recommended as a first-line treatment in clinical guidelines. Recent developments in the field have included the development of scales to measure family intervention adherence and skill competency. This study reports the findings of a preliminary investigation into the accuracy of sub-scales of the family intervention scale. This scale measures the skills required to manage a family intervention session as well as delivery of a specific family intervention. The findings show a highly significant correlation between the two sub-scales (r = 0.61, n = 82, p < 0.001), however, this correlation only accounts for 37% of the common variance (r2 = 0.37). Use of the core session item sub-scale separately from the specific intervention sub-scale is recommended and supported by the internal consistency of the sub-scale (α = 0.87). Further larger powered and robust studies are required on the family intervention scale to determine its psychometric properties.