Introduction: The Life Skills Profile (LSP) is an assessment instrument of general function in activities of daily life, especially developed for people diagnosed of a severe mental illness. There are different versions of the LSP. The aim of this paper is to validate and adapt the brief form of the LSP (LSP-20) to the Spanish population.
Methods: Two different samples have been recruited for this study. The first sample was made up of 231 outpatients with a clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia who were randomly selected. The following analyses were performed: principal axis factoring analysis, internal consistency and convergent and discriminant validity between the LSP-20 and the Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale (PANSS). The second sample was recruited in order to assess interrater reliability and was composed of 30 long-stay inpatients with a diagnosis of chronic schizophrenia.
Results: Factor analysis produced four factors accounting for 41.22 % of the total variance. The following labels were suggested for the factors: compliance, social initiative, self-care and antisocial behavior. Internal consistency ranged from 0.69 (antisocial behavior) to 0.79 (social initiative). Correlations between the LSP-20 and the PANSS were moderate and clinically significant. Interrater reliability ranged from 0.58 (to have defined interests) to 0.89 (to wear clean clothes usually).
Conclusions: The brief form of LSP can be useful in real clinical settings to help to personalize the aims of the rehabilitation interventions and to evaluate the health care model.