The reliability of the Geriatric Mental State Examination. Community survey version.

A version of the Geriatric Mental State Examination has been prepared for use in community surveys. Its reliability has been investigated on a sample of geriatric day-patients (n = 52). Two psychiatrists separately examined each patient and audiotaped the interviews. It is argued that unless certain requirements in the data from such a study are fulfilled, interpretable reliability statistics cannot be calculated for individual items. Where the data were sufficient in this study, the mean phi coefficient was 0.84 within interviews and 0.56 between interviews. The reliability of individual items has been assessed as a basis for further improvement in the instrument.