Are the Short and Long Forms of the Young Schema Questionnaire Comparable and How Well Does Each Version Predict Psychopathology Scores?

Abstract

Young’s Schema Questionnaire (YSQ; Young & Brown, 1994) was developed to measure schemas that may need to be modified during therapy. This study examines whether the long and short forms of the YSQ produce comparable scores in a heterogenous group of psychiatric outpatients. The study also looks at how well each version predicts psychopathology measured by the SCL-90 -R (Derogatis, 1977). The results of this study show that the two versions of the YSQ have similar levels of internal consistency, parallel forms reliability and concurrent validity, and indicate that the short from can be used with reasonable confidence by the clinician and researcher. Both versions of the YSQ were modest predictors of psychopathology scores and each version produced slightly different patterns of predictions although there was overlap between the predicted schemas in each version.

Maladaptive schemas in non‐clinical adolescents: relations to perceived parental rearing behaviours, Big Five personality factors and psychopathological symptoms

“…Further, this study demonstrated that the YSQ is reliable and possesses satisfactory convergent and divergent validity as shown by its correlations with measures of psychological distress, self-esteem and personality disorder symptoms. Highly similar results have been obtained in subsequent studies that were carried out to examine the factor structure, reliability and validity of the long and short versions of the YSQ (Calvete, Estevez, Lopez de Arroyabe, & Pilar, 2005;Cecero, Nelson, & Gillie, 2004;Lee, Taylor, & Dunn, 1999;Rijkeboer, Van den Bergh, & Van den Bout, 2005;Stopa, Thorne, Waters, & Preston, 2001;Waller, Meyer, & Ohanian, 2001). Finally, using the YSQ, core maladaptive schemas have been successfully identified in patients suffering from various types of psychopathology such as eating disorders (Meyer & Gillings, 2004;Meyer, Leung, Feary, & Mann, 2001;Waller, Dickson, & Ohanian, 2002), anxiety disorders (Dellatre et al, 2004), comorbid anxiety and eating disorders (Hinrichsen, Waller, & Emanuelli, 2004), substance abuse disorders (Brotchie, Meyer, Copello, Kidney, & Waller, 2004;Decouvelaere, Graziani, Gackiere, Rusinek, & Hautekeete, 2002) and aggressionrelated disorders (Baker & Beech, 2004).…”

Different core beliefs predict paternal and maternal attachment representations in young women

“…Each item is scored on a sixpoint scale, with high scores reflecting unhealthy, maladaptive core beliefs. The internal consistency and discriminative validity of the short 75-item version have been established and are comparable to those of the long version (Waller, Meyer, & Ohanian, 2001), and has been demonstrated to have good clinical and empirical reliability and validity (Cecero et al, 2004;Stopa, Thorne, Waters, & Preston, 2001;Welburn et al, 2002), with empirical support for the hypothesized factors (see, e.g., Cecero et al, 2004). In addition to showing good construct validity in its ability to predict psychopathological and psychiatric symptoms (Stopa et al, 2001;Welburn et al, 2002), the YSQ-S is also suitable for use in non-clinical groups (Cecero et al, 2004;Waller et al, 2001).…”

Schema and parental bonding in overweight and nonoverweight female adolescents

“…Young 2 suggests that a schema with two or more items rated as 5 or 6 is 'clinically significant'. Research 27,28 suggests that the short version has very similar levels of internal consistency, reliability and validity compared with the longer version.…”