A national sample of IAPSRS members' responses to the psychiatric rehabilitation beliefs, goals, and practices scale

This study reports on the convergent-discriminant validity of the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Beliefs, Goals, and Practices Scale (PRBGP) which purports to measure practitioners' knowledge of the current consensus in psychiatric rehabilitation. The sample comprised 478 IAPSRS members who represented practitioners from 39 states. The study found that the PRBGP variance among this sample was primarily associated with the number of 15 leading contributors to the psychiatric rehabilitation literature that these practitioners claimed to have read when education, discipline, role, experience, and agency area were controlled. Experience in the behavioral health field and the administrator role were also significantly related to the PRBGP, but these relationships may have also been a function of informational factors associated with IAPSRS membership. For a combined sample (n = 757), it was also found that the PRBGP is primarily related to the number of leading authors that these practitioners read. The PRGBP appears to measure knowledge of the current consensus on beliefs, goals, and practices in psychiatric rehabilitation, and is not a measure of these other responder characteristics.