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Validation of the Social Effort and Conscientious Scale (SEACS) in Schizophrenia

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Abstract

People with schizophrenia often experience impaired social functioning and low satisfaction with relationships. Existing measures of social impairment in schizophrenia primarily assess pleasure derived from social interactions, rather than examining impairments in social motivation, including effortful behavior. We conducted a validation study of a recently developed self-report measure of social effort in 31 participants with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, including tests of association with standard assessments of social functioning and behavior in daily life using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). We also assessed predictive validity of the scale, measuring the extent to which social effort at baseline predicted changes in social functioning over a 60-day smartphone-based social intervention. Higher social effort was associated with greater social functioning and lower negative symptom severity at baseline. Baseline social effort did not predict changes in social functioning over the intervention period, nor was it related to EMA-reported social experiences. Thus, tendencies toward social effort exertion may capture meaningful variance in gold-standard assessments of social functioning and negative symptoms, but may not track with social experiences in daily life. Further research should examine whether social effort is sensitive to change, and evaluate the utility of targeting social effort in evidence-based interventions for improving the social functioning in schizophrenia.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Celina Nguyen and Kelley Long for their help in the literature review, and the participants who volunteered in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, USA

    Renata Botello, Jessica L. Mow, Kim T. Mueser & Daniel Fulford

  2. Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences, Boston University, Boston, USA

    Renata Botello, Kathryn Gill, Jessica L. Mow, Jasmine Mote, Kim T. Mueser & Daniel Fulford

  3. Department of Psychology, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, USA

    Lawrence Leung & David E. Gard

  4. Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, Boston University, 635 Commonwealth Ave., SAR-556, 02215, Boston, MA, USA

    Kim T. Mueser

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  1. Renata Botello
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Correspondence to Renata Botello.

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This study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (R21MH111501). The funding source did not have a role in the study design, implementation, data analysis, or review of this manuscript.

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Botello, R., Gill, K., Mow, J.L. et al. Validation of the Social Effort and Conscientious Scale (SEACS) in Schizophrenia. J Psychopathol Behav Assess 45, 844–852 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-023-10031-1

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