The Case Record Rating Scale: a method for rating symptom and social function data from case records.

Case records provide a vast resource of information for clinical research, yet their value has been limited by several methodological problems. One of these has been the absence of standardized approaches for making diagnoses and other clinical judgments from case record data. This report describes the Case Record Rating Scale, an instrument designed to provide a standardized method for abstracting case record information. The reliability of the scale is demonstrated, and the advantages and problems encountered using case record data for research are described.