ИСТИНА

Introduction During the last decades there's a marked rise of interest towards the questions of social functioning of patients. The most relevant line of research is evaluation of schizophrenia patient’s conditions and ability of patients to independent existence (phenomenon of autonomy). By М.А. Morozova and G. E. Rupchev (2015) a special scale for assessment of autonomy among patients with schizophrenia was developed. The objective of this study was investigating of the construct validity a scale of autonomy. Method Participants. 200 patients representative from the Mental Health Research Center of Moscow, 112 men and 88 women (mean age=39, 03). Instruments. New scale of autonomy (SA), which comprises six items: activity, productive communication, social network, medical conventionality, care of themselves, social skills. And also well-known scales such as PANSS, NSA, CGI, PSP, EQ-5D. Results The internal consistency. Cronbach’s alpha = 0,93. Significant correlations of all items of the scale with a total score were found (p<0,001). The convergent and discriminant validity. Convergent validity was demonstrated by relatively high correlations between total score SA and closely related rating instruments, scales detecting the presence of negative symptoms: N4 (r=-.506**), PANSS Neg (r=-.573**), CGI Neg (r=-.573**) and four items of PSP: self-care(r=-0,545**); personal and social relationships (r=-0,526**), social useful activities (r=-0,492**), level of functioning (r=0,492**). Weak or rather weak correlations between AS and psychometric scales, assessing other constructs proved good discriminant validity of AS. Factor analysis separates distinct «autonomy» factor, comprised of all AS items plus several other variables (Table 1). Discussion We revealed high internal consistency of the scale of autonomy, which was confirmed by factor analysis. The good convergent and discriminant validity of the scale of autonomy was detected. Correlation and factor analysis showed correlation of SA with negative symptoms and several items of PSP scale. So, the scale of autonomy meets the basic psychodiagnostic requirements and is a new psychometric instrument assessing one separate ability.