Measuring perceived meaningfulness in day centres for persons with mental illness.

RATIONALE As support in leading a meaningful and active life, a person with mental illness is often given the opportunity to attend a day centre. However, few studies have investigated the meaningfulness perceived by the person visiting a day centre. For such a purpose, a self-report instrument was developed. AIMS To explore whether perceived meaningfulness, as expressed in the recently developed instrument Evaluation of Perceived Meaning in Day Centers (EPM-DC), could be viewed as one dimension and also to investigate the psychometric properties of this instrument. METHODS Persons with mental illness attending five day centres in Sweden participated and completed the questionnaire. The data were analysed by Rasch analysis. MAJOR FINDINGS The study showed that the concept captured in the instrument could be viewed as unidimensional and the result gave preliminary evidence for sound psychometric properties. PRINCIPAL CONCLUSION The results indicate promising signs of validity and reliability, but the suitability of self-reporting may be questioned.