Key wordsThe purpose of the present study is to test interrater reliability of the Japanese version of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and to examine factors possibly affecting the reliability. The study group conducted the PANSS rating on 20 patients with DSM-IV schizophrenia. For the analysis of interrater reliability, intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was calculated. The ICC for individual items of the PANSS ranged from 0.26 to 0.92, and those for the positive, negative, and general psychopathology subscales were 0.85, 0.83 and 0.75, respectively. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the subscales were 0.84, 0.87 and 0.76, respectively. The interrater reliability and the internal consistency were satisfactory and similar to those obtained in the antecedent studies. No salient training effect was found in a sequential analysis of the concordance rate. It is concluded that the Japanese version of the PANSS is a reliable and efficient tool for comprehensive assessment of the schizophrenic syndrome.interrater reliability, intraclass coefficient, Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), schizophrenia.

By means of the multisample structured means strategy, we examined gender differences in a five-factorial structure model of Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) ratings of 308 patients of both sexes with DSM-IV schizophrenia with comparable age at investigation and overall symptomatic severity across sex. The test indicated that the factors and component symptoms were common across sex, whereas the factor loadings might be different. However, the model that incorporated the difference in the factor loadings did not improve model fit indices. Therefore, it is concluded that this investigation elicited only minimal gender differences, and on the whole confirmed the PANSS five-factor structure for both sexes.

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