A Preliminary Study On The Civil Competence Standard Assessment Of The Mentally Disordered

Objective:(1)To define the concept and gradation of civil competence;(2)To ascertain the items which serve as standard of the civil competence assessment;(3)To draft and validate the rating scale.Methods: Starting from the judicial practice, combined with the relevant provisions of Chinese civil law, studying from the research results of the civil capacity assessment criteria in home and abroad, we abstracted six items serve as standard of the civil competence assessment, named as: awareness of situation, factual understanding of issues, appreciation of likely consequences, rational manipulation of information, functioning in one's own environment, communication of a choice. The rating scale was drafted according to those items and the logical sequences of civil competence assessment after discussed by the experts. And then we tested its reliability and validity and practicality of the scale by cross-sectional-studying, at the same time we quantitative analyzed the psychiatric symptoms of the persons who have been assessed by Healthy and Disorder Rating Test (RTHD).Results:(1)Three-leveled gradation of civil competence is recommended. (2)The items introduced have high correlation with the conclusions made by the experts, in the cases of personal injury compensation (r=0.632～0.876, p=0.000)and contract dispute (r=0.703～0.834, p=0.000), as well as high intro-correlation of each item ( r=0.575～0.911and0.712～0.877).(3)In the cross-sectional study, the items and the scores of scale have high assessor consistency in scale-rating (kendall's coefficient of concordance is 0.649～0.977,P<0.05); The cases were divided into three groups according to the experts'opinion, the average score is 2.45±3.297(full civil competence), 12.56±4.788(diminished civil competence), 25.44±4.054(no civil competence) respectively, with significant statistical differences(F=146.116,P=0.000; Cronbachα=0.9787,The Split-half reliability is very good ( r=0.9741,P=0.000), The correlation coefficient between the items and the scale score is 0.7443～0.9414.The expert and scale conclusions have high consistency(kappa=0.726,P=0.000), 88.5% of the original grouped cases were correctly classified.Conclusion: The data suggest that the scale has good reliability and validity, but this is a pilot study.