Dimensional Analyses of the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale and Yale-BrownObsessive-Compulsive Scale Checklist

Although obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has long been a unitary diagnosis, recently there has been much interest in its potential heterogeneity, as manifested by symptom subgroups. Although the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scal(YBOCS) is a widely used instrument to assess obsessive-compulsive symptomatology, the variables reflecting the pathogenesis of OCD and Y-BOCS subscores were not usually significantly associated. The aims of this study are to clarify the identification of the dimensional structure of the symptoms included in the Y-BOCS checklist and to explore the factor structure of the YBOCS. Ninety five OCD patients participated in this study and performed the Y-BOCS and Y-BOCS checklist. The 13 main symptom categories included in the Y-BOCS checklist and 10 items included in the Y-BOCS were factor analyzed using principal components analysis. Using principal component analysis, we derived 4 factors from the 13 main contents of the YBOCS checklist. Four factors, viz. hoarding/repeating, contamination/cleaning, aggressive/sexual, and religious/somatic, accounted for more than 60% of the variance. We also derived 3 factors from the 10 items of the Y-BOCS, viz. severity of obsession, severity of compulsion, and resistance to symptoms, which accounted for more than 70% of the variance. Four symptom dimensions from the Y-BOCS checklist and three symptom dimensions from the Y-BOCS were identified as significant factors accounting for the variance. These factors may be of value in future genetic, neurobiological, and treatment response studies. KCI Citation Count: 0