Abstract
In this study we investigated the relationship of executive tests outcomes and the scales describing daily funcioning with the aim to specify their ecological validity, with the use of correlations. Ecological validity is a specific form of external validity.
It refers to the extent of the relation of outcome measures and the behaviour in ordinary daily situations. Or, in other words, what does the test outcome bring for the patient's real life.
Patients were assessed with Wiscinssin card sorting test, Controled Oral Word Association test, Trail Making Test B, the Rey-Osterrieth complex figure test, and WAIS III Similarities subtest, as well as with clinical scales: Personal and Social Functioning Scale, newly developed clinical scale, Instrumental activities of daily living scale, and clinical insight scale. Choosing self rating or patient questioning as a measure for describing the social functioning seems to be problematic mainly due disturbed insight in schizophrenia patients.
Acceptable assessment of executive function and social functioning is a fundamental condition for planning psychiatric rehabilitation and resocialization in accordance with the needs of the particular patient.