Symptom-Checklist SCL-90-R:: Validation and standardization based on a representative sample of the German population

The Symptom-Checklist SCL-90-R by Derogatis (1977) is a frequently used inventory to assess psychological distress. This study presents results of the Validation and standardization of the SCL-90-R based on a representative sample of the German population (2179 subjects aged 16 to 96 years). It could be demonstrated that the SCL-90-R is a reliable instrument to measure the global intensity of psychological distress. Factor analysis of the items of the questionnaire yielded a strong unrotated first factor, suggesting that a general factor (global distress factor) may be present. This, together with the fact that high intercorrelations were found between the nine original subscales, suggests that the instrument is not multidimensional. Therefore a classification of different groups of symptoms by different subscales is not possible, and the representative norms reported in this paper are limited to the global scores GSI, PST, and GSDI.