Abstract
BACKGROUND: Current assessments of expressed emotions among the psychiatric population face significant limitations in reliability and validity, particularly for non-clinical adolescent populations. Existing scales are designed for clinical settings and lack applicability to broader contexts. This study addresses these gaps by developing and validating the Perceived Expressed Emotion Scale for the General Adolescent Population (PEES-GAP). Tailored specifically for adolescents outside clinical environments, PEES-GAP enhances utility and effectiveness, offering a robust, reliable, and valid tool to assess emotional dynamics in diverse settings, representing a significant advancement in expressed emotion research. METHODS: The study adopted a descriptive cross-sectional survey design, using accidental sampling techniques to recruit participants. One thousand seven hundred forty-one students were selected from six secondary schools and three universities from three southwestern Nigeria states to complete the questionnaires. Instruments for data collection included the Perceived Expressed Emotion Scale (PEES-GAP), Index of Family Relation (IFR), and Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST). Ethical clearance for this study was sought and obtained from the University of Lagos Ethical Review Committee. RESULTS: The study showed that PEES-GAP's internal consistency was 0.800, while validity analyses proved that the Index of family Relation (IFR) and Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST) converged and diverged, respectively, with the three subdomains of expressed emotion as measured by PEES-GAP. CONCLUSION: This study confirms the 20-item PEES-GAP as a reliable, valid tool for assessing expressed emotion in adolescents across clinical and non-clinical settings. Ensuring comparability and broad application offers a uniform measure, promotes holistic understanding, and enhances resource efficiency. Hence, it comprehensively addresses mental health issues from the client's perspective.