The Competency Screening Test

Abstract

The Competency Screening Test was administered to a group of patient/defendants to study its interscorer reliability and its predictive validity of fitness to stand trial based on psychiatric opinion. The interscorer reliabilities were high. The test also significantly differentiated between patients categorized by the participating psychiatrist as fit and those categorized as not fit. The results compared favorably in terms of overall accuracy with those published earlier. An analysis of false positives and false negatives suggested some possible differences in the kinds of predictive errors inherent in the two sets of data. The desirability of the latter approach was pointed out. The data support the conclusion that this instrument may be useful as a screening tool for referral of patient/defendants by a nonpsychiatric member of the treatment team for competency evaluation by a psychiatric member of that team.