Negative symptom assessment of chronic schizophrenia patients.

A new scale for assessing negative symptoms in schizophrenia, the Negative Symptom Assessment (NSA), was administered to 101 male chronic, inpatient schizophrenia patients. Factor analysis of the NSA yielded seven factors, but most of the explained variance resided in Factor 1, Restricted Affect/Emotion. The factors that emerged from this study closely resembled NSA factors derived from an earlier study of outpatient schizophrenia patients, which indicates the factor structure of the NSA is robust. A constellation of variables reflecting long-term or chronic illness were significantly related to six of the seven factors. These results suggest that "institutionalism" may play a role in the evolution of some negative symptoms.