Table of Contents
Abstract
The Questionnaire about the Process of Recovery (QPR) is a prominent self-report instrument designed to capture the Personal recovery journey of individuals diagnosed with severe mental illness, particularly Psychosis. Unlike traditional clinical measures that focus primarily on symptom reduction or functional impairment, the QPR emphasizes the subjective, lived experience of the service user. This aligns with a paradigm shift in mental health care that prioritizes personal meaning, empowerment, and a fulfilling life alongside or despite the presence of psychiatric symptoms.
Originally developed collaboratively with mental health service users in England, the QPR exists in both a 22-item and a more streamlined 15-item format. The tool assesses various facets of the recovery process, such as building a positive identity, finding hope, and engaging in meaningful activities. By centering the patient's perspective, the QPR provides clinicians and researchers with a quantifiable metric of Personal recovery, facilitating the evaluation of recovery-oriented interventions and services.
Rigorous psychometric evaluations have demonstrated that the 15-item version of the QPR is particularly robust, offering excellent reliability and validity while minimizing respondent burden. Consequently, it has become a highly recommended tool for routine clinical practice and large-scale research trials aiming to track recovery outcomes over time.
📊 Psychometric Scorecard
15
Unidimensional
0.89
📍 England
Authors
Purpose
The primary purpose of the QPR is to provide a standardized, empirically validated method for assessing Personal recovery from the viewpoint of the mental health service user. Historically, psychiatric outcomes were largely defined by clinicians and centered on symptom remission or relapse rates. However, this clinical perspective often fails to capture what matters most to patients, such as regaining a sense of control, rebuilding self-esteem, and establishing a meaningful role in society. The QPR bridges this gap by offering a patient-reported outcome measure specifically tailored to the recovery paradigm.
For researchers, the QPR serves as a crucial endpoint for evaluating the efficacy of recovery-oriented interventions. For clinicians, it acts as a conversational catalyst and a tracking tool to ensure that care plans align with the individual's personal goals. By utilizing a measure co-produced with service users, mental health systems can better operationalize and monitor their commitment to recovery-focused care.
Construct
The psychological construct measured by the QPR is Personal recovery in the context of severe mental illness. Drawing from foundational frameworks in psychiatric rehabilitation, Personal recovery is conceptualized not as a clinical endpoint, but as a deeply personal, continuous process of changing one's attitudes, values, feelings, and goals. It involves living a satisfying, hopeful, and contributing life even with the limitations caused by illness.
The original 22-item QPR was theorized to encompass two distinct dimensions: an intrapersonal subscale reflecting internal processes like self-worth and empowerment, and an interpersonal subscale capturing external processes like feeling valued by others. However, subsequent psychometric scrutiny revealed that the interpersonal dimension underperformed statistically. As a result, the refined 15-item version primarily captures a unidimensional construct of intrapersonal recovery, which strongly reflects the core internal shifts necessary for personal transformation and well-being.
Validity
The validity of the QPR has been rigorously tested to ensure it accurately captures the construct of Personal recovery. Convergent validity, which assesses how well the scale correlates with other measures of similar constructs, was demonstrated to be strong. Specifically, the 15-item version showed a robust correlation of 0.73 with established measures of mental well-being, indicating that higher scores on the QPR appropriately align with greater psychological health and flourishing.
Additionally, the scale's sensitivity to change was evaluated to determine its utility in longitudinal studies and clinical monitoring. The 15-item QPR yielded a sensitivity to change coefficient of 0.40, suggesting it is capable of detecting meaningful shifts in a patient's recovery journey over time. This responsiveness is critical for evaluating the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions, confirming that the QPR is not merely capturing static personality traits but rather a dynamic process of recovery.
Convergent & Discriminant Validation Correlations
| Reference Instrument | Correlation Coefficient (r) |
|---|---|
| Unspecified convergent validity measure | r=0.73 |
Reliability
Reliability analyses of the QPR indicate that it is a highly consistent and stable measurement tool. Internal consistency, which evaluates how well the items within the scale measure the same underlying construct, was found to be excellent for the 15-item version, with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.89. This high value suggests that the items are strongly interrelated and reliably capture the core essence of Personal recovery without excessive redundancy.
Furthermore, the scale demonstrated solid temporal stability. Test-retest reliability, assessed by administering the questionnaire to the same individuals across different time points, yielded a correlation of 0.74. This indicates that in the absence of significant clinical interventions or life events, individuals' scores on the QPR remain relatively stable. Together, these reliability metrics confirm that the 15-item QPR meets stringent psychometric standards for both research and routine clinical application.
Factor Analysis
The structural integrity of the QPR was evaluated using confirmatory factor analysis, a sophisticated statistical technique used to verify whether the data fit a hypothesized measurement model. Researchers compared the original 22-item two-factor model, comprising intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions, against a streamlined 15-item unidimensional model.
The confirmatory factor analysis results revealed that the 15-item version provided a good fit to the data, supporting a single, cohesive factor of Personal recovery. In contrast, the 22-item version exhibited structural weaknesses, particularly within the interpersonal subscale, which failed to perform adequately as a distinct dimension. The substantial overlap between the intrapersonal subscale of the 22-item version and the entirety of the 15-item version further justified the adoption of the shorter scale. Consequently, the 15-item QPR is recognized as a structurally sound, unidimensional measure that efficiently captures the recovery construct.
Subscales
| Subscale | Items | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Intrapersonal (22-item version) | Measures internal processes of recovery such as self-worth, hope, and empowerment. | |
| Interpersonal (22-item version) | Measures external processes such as feeling valued by others and community engagement (noted to underperform psychometrically). |
Instrument
| Test Type | Self-report questionnaire |
| Format | 15 or 22 items, Likert-type scale |
| Scoring | Sum of item scores; higher scores indicate further progression in the recovery process |
| Language | English |
| Population | Psychiatric patients, Adults |
| Age Group | Adults |
| Administration | Self-administered |
Questionnaire about the Process of Recovery Items
Items are currently not available
The individual items of this scale are not publicly available. Researchers interested in using this instrument should contact the original authors directly to request the scale materials.
Sample
Two datasets were utilized: Dataset 1 consisted of 88 participants assessed at baseline, 2 weeks, and 3 months. Dataset 2 consisted of 399 participants from a registered trial assessed at baseline and 1 year. Participants were adult mental health service users with a Psychosis diagnosis.
Cite This Paper
Julie Williams, Mary Leamy, Francesca Pesola, Victoria Bird, Clair Le Boutillier, Mike Slade (2015). Questionnaire about the Process of Recovery. The British Journal of Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.114.161695
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Cite this article
Mohammed looti (2026). Questionnaire about the Process of Recovery. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES. Retrieved from https://scales.arabpsychology.com/s/questionnaire-about-the-process-of-recovery/
Mohammed looti. "Questionnaire about the Process of Recovery." PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES, 14 Aug. 2026, https://scales.arabpsychology.com/s/questionnaire-about-the-process-of-recovery/.
Mohammed looti. "Questionnaire about the Process of Recovery." PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES, 2026. https://scales.arabpsychology.com/s/questionnaire-about-the-process-of-recovery/.
Mohammed looti (2026) 'Questionnaire about the Process of Recovery', PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES. Available at: https://scales.arabpsychology.com/s/questionnaire-about-the-process-of-recovery/.
[1] Mohammed looti, "Questionnaire about the Process of Recovery," PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES, vol. X, no. Y, ص Z-Z, August, 2026.
Mohammed looti. Questionnaire about the Process of Recovery. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES. 2026;vol(issue):pages.