[Instruments for the economical evaluation of psychiatric service systems: methodological foundations of the European standardisation and the German adaptation].

OBJECTIVE: In the project "Cost-effectiveness of psychiatric service systems. A European comparison" a German version of instruments for the assessment of needs for services (CAN-EU), service satisfaction (VSSS-EU) relatives' burden of care (IEQ-EU) and costs of psychiatric services (CSSRI-EU) was developed in close cooperation with the EPSILON Study group.

METHOD: The English original versions of the instruments were translated into German and a back-translation into the original language was carried out by a second translator. The back-translation was screened by the first author of the original version. The German versions of all instruments were tested for comprehensibility and practicability by means of focus groups. The internal consistency of all instruments were tested on a representative sample of 307 patients with schizophrenia according to ICD-10 F20. Test-retest reliability and inter-rater reliability was tested by a sub-sample of 50 patients.

RESULTS: Psychometric properties of the translated instruments will be presented and discussed.

CONCLUSIONS: Statistical methods for the assessment of the reliability coefficients were identical with those of the EPSILON study, therefore the psychometric properties of the German version of the CAN-EU are directly comparable with the other European versions of the instrument.