Reliability and validity of an adapted Chinese version of Barratt Impulsiveness Scale

Objective: To revise the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale(BIS-11) for use in China and assess the reliability and validity of the adapted Chinese version of the scale among community residents and college students.Methods: The adapted Chinese version of Barratt Impulsiveness Scale was administered to multi-stage,stratified random samples of 603 rural residents from Shandong,548 urban residents from Liaoning and 627 university students from Chongqing.Community respondents with a middle school education or higher were randomly assigned to either complete the instrument on their own or to have the instrument administered by an interviewer,and university students(who all self-completed the scale) were randomly assigned to complete the instrument anonymously or to sign the instrument.Test-retest reliability was tested in 504 rural residents,252 urban residents,and 307 university students who were re-administered the questionnaire 5 to 8 days after the first administration.Results:The internal consistency of 30 items scale and of the three 10-item subscales(assessing impulsive planning,motor impulsiveness and cognitive impulsiveness) were excellent(Cronbach' s alphas were 0.77-0.89) and the test-retest reliability was good(intraclass correlation coefficients were 0.68-0.89).There were no significant differences between community respondents who self-completed the scale versus those administered the scale by an interviewer,or between students who anonymously completed the scale versus those who signed the questionnaire(Ps0.05).There were,however,significant differences in the BIS scores among the three groups,the rural resident respondents had the lowest scores and the university student respondents had the highest scores(P0.05).Conclusion: The reliability and validity of the adapted Chinese version of the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale are satisfactory,which could be used in the clinical and research work in China.