New and Improved? A Comparison of the Original and Revised Versions of the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms

Abstract

The current study evaluated the accuracy of the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms, Second Edition (SIRS-2) in a criterion-group study using a sample of forensic psychiatric patients and a community simulation sample, comparing it to the original SIRS and to results published in the SIRS-2 manual. The SIRS-2 yielded an impressive specificity rate (94.3%) that exceeded that obtained using the original SIRS scoring method (92.0%) and approached that observed in the SIRS-2 normative data (97.5%). However, changes in scoring resulted in markedly lower sensitivity rates of the SIRS-2 (36.8% among forensic patients and 66.7% among simulators) compared with the SIRS (47.4% and 75.0%, respectively). The removal of the Total Score from the SIRS-2 further hindered identification of feigning. Analyses also evaluated the additive value of the new RS-Total and MT Index scales in the SIRS-2. Implications of these results for forensic psychologists are discussed.