Psychometric Instruments and Women’s Mental Health

Abstract

For both research and clinical purposes, scales are often used to measure various phenomena, such as anxiety, depression, quality of life, and other mental states. The use of psychiatric scales in clinical practice is widely known and can be useful as a part of diagnostic evaluations, to identify the presence or absence of a given mental disorder, to monitor treatment progress, and also to quantify and record symptom severity. In order to be able to trust that the results are an accurate reflection of the person’s actual state, the scales must be constructed properly and possess adequate psychometric properties. This chapter will outline the steps involved in constructing a scale and discuss how the properties of reliability and validity are measured and assessed. It will then review a number of scales that are commonly used in the field of women’s mental health and evaluate them against these criteria.