The Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale
1989/11/01 by Wayne K. Goodman · 7,646 citations
Psychology · #Anxiety #Anxiety disorder #Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes #Body Image and Dysmorphia Studies #Clinical psychology #Cronbach's alpha #Developmental psychology #Inter-rater reliability #Internal consistency #Obsessive compulsive #Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders #Psychiatry #Psychology #Psychometrics #Rating scale #Scale (ratio) #Severity of illness
paper · doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1989.01810110048007
published in Archives of General Psychiatry 46(11), 1006 (American Medical Association)
openalex publication_date 1989/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract
The Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale was designed to remedy the problems of existing rating scales by providing a specific measure of the severity of symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder that is not influenced by the type of obsessions or compulsions present. The scale is a clinician-rated, 10-item scale, each item rated from 0 (no symptoms) to 4 (extreme symptoms) (total range, 0 to 40), with separate subtotals for severity of obsessions and compulsions. In a study involving four raters and 40 patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder at various stages of treatment, interrater reliability for the total Yale-Brown Scale score and each of the 10 individual items was excellent, with a high degree of internal consistency among all item scores demonstrated with Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Based on pretreatment assessment of 42 patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, each item was frequently endorsed and measured across a range of severity. These findings suggest that the Yale-Brown Scale is a reliable instrument for measuring the severity of illness in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder with a range of severity and types of obsessive-compulsive symptoms.
Citations
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