RELIABILITY OF SELF-REPORTS CONCERNING HYPOCHONDRIACAL AND SOMATOFORM SYMPTOMS

This study concerns the reliability of two scales for the assessment of somatoform and of hypochondriacal symptoms. N=51 in-patients of a psychosomatic hospital filled out two scales two times with a 72-hour-interval between. The Screening for Somatoform Symptoms SOMS (Rief et al., 1992 a; r(tt) = 0.85) as well as the Whiteley-Index measuring hypochondriasis (r(tt) = 0.83) reach high reliability scores. However, the stability differs depending of the sex of the subgroup: women have higher reliability scores than men. While the stability of the general score of the Whiteley-Index is high, one dimension (''disease conviction'') has lower scores and shows some insufficiencies. The comparision of three clinical subgroups shows good reliability coefficients for patients with anxiety or depressive disorders as well as for patients with tinnitus, while patients with chronic pain syndromes have lower retest reliability scores.