Empowerment With Psychotic Symptoms Scale (EWPSS): Exploratory Study of the Scale's Psychometric Properties

BackgroundEmpowerment has been defined as the ability to act autonomously, the willingness to take risks and being aware of responsibility. The importance of this construct in psychosis has been emphasized by recovery models. An integrant part of the Clinical Interview for Psychotic Disorders (CIPD), the EWPSS is a visual analog scale in which the participants assess their sense of empowerment regarding symptoms (delusions, hallucinations, negative symptoms and disorganization). EWPSS focuses on personal empowerment (self-worth and self-efficacy) as it could apply to symptoms.AimsTo preliminarily assess the psychometric properties of the EWPSS in a sample of participants with psychosis.MethodsThe sample comprised 22 participants (68.2% male), 72.7% single, 50% employed, between 19 and 47 years old (M = 31.05; SD = 7.088), with 4–17 years of education (M = 11.77; SD = 3.176). The most prevalent diagnosis was schizophrenia (68.2%) and the participants had a mean of 1.90 hospitalizations (SD = 2.548). The participants were assessed with the CIPD (EWPSS) and Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scales-21.ResultsEWPSS has shown acceptable reliability for all dimensions (with alphas ranging between .54 and .78). Empowerment with delusions was associated with the other dimensions, excepting for empowerment with negative symptoms (which in turn was not associated significantly with any dimension). Empowerment regarding hallucinations and with disorganization were only associated with empowerment with delusions, which was also associated with anxiety symptoms (r = –.52, P = .016).ConclusionsThe EWPSS presented adequate reliability and validity. Further studies intended to explore the factorial structure of the EWPSS are under development.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.