Validation of the Norwegian version of the Social Functioning Scale (SFS) for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

Hellvin, T., Sundet, K.,Vaskinn, A., Simonsen, C.,Ueland, T., Andreassen, O.A. & Melle, I. (2010). Validation of the Norwegian version of the Social Functioning Scale (SFS) for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 51, 525–533. Studies of social functioning in severe mental disorders are disadvantaged by the multitude of different assessment instruments in use. The present study aims to establish reliability and validity of the Norwegian version of the Social Functioning Scale (SFS) and to examine social functioning in bipolar disorder (BD) compared to schizophrenia (SZ) and healthy controls (HC). SFS, a 76 item questionnaire divided into seven subscales measuring various aspects of daily life functioning, was administered to samples diagnosed with BD (n = 100) or SZ (n = 100) and to HC (n = 100), recruited from the ongoing Tematic Organized Psychosis (TOP) study. Reliability analyses prove adequate psychometric properties both for the composite full scale score (α: 0.81) as well as for the seven subscale scores (α: 0.60–0.88). Principal component analysis of the subscales confirms a one‐component structure, explaining 59% of the variance. Although significantly correlated with the Global Assessment of Functioning, our results indicate that the SFS measures different aspects of social functioning, is less influenced by demographic and clinical characteristics, but differentiates at the same time significantly BD from SZ. Thus, SFS adds valuable information as a supplement to standard clinician‐rated assessment tools of social functioning, suited both for research and clinical work.     

Meat Label Information: Effects of Separate Versus Conjoint Presentation on Product Evaluation1

Consumers want more information about the food they consider buying. One way to provide such information is via food labeling, but not all label information can be used effectively. We tested how information on actual meat labels from a supermarket environment analysis was evaluated against a realistic new label when labels were seen separately vs. in a conjoint (simultaneous) presentation. Participants (M = 24 years; 49% women) evaluated how much money they would pay for identical meat products with different label information. Conjoint presentation of labels led to opposite product rankings compared to separate presentations in some conditions (preference‐reversal effect). We discuss the importance of food labels that provide transparent, evaluable information for supporting informed, responsible meat product decisions.