External validity of the Symptom Assessment-45 Questionnaire (SA-45) in a clinical sample

This study seeks to evaluate the construct validity of the Symptom Assessment-45 by investigating the instrument’s correlation with selected scales from the Personality Assessment Inventory and life-event data in a sample of 93 psychiatric patients. The life-event data used in the study included: education and employment, as well as history of suicide attempts, psychiatric hospitalizations, medical problems, hallucinations, and paranoid ideation. Bivariate correlations were computed to explore the associations among the SA-45 scales and the validity criteria. The results indicated that the SA-45 scales demonstrated adequate convergent and divergent validity with target scales from the PAI. They were also found to be meaningfully associated with a variety of life event variables. These findings add to the emerging body of evidence corroborating the convergent and discriminant validity of the SA-45.