Subjects included 95 French-Canadia

Subjects included 95 French-Canadian patients (23 women, 72 men) who met the DSM-III-R criteria for schizophrenia (catatonic, disorganized, undifferentiated, or residual: N = 32), paranoid schizophrenia (N = 53), or schizoaffective disorder (N = 10), as confirmed with the Structured Clinical Interview Diagnostic (SCID; Williams et al., 1992). Subjects consented to participate in the research project without knowing whether they would be assigned to the experimental or control group. Whereas attendance and drop out for the control group remained negligible for the duration of the study, 10 subjects (19%) from the experimental group never attended, and five (10%) missed more than four consecutive sessions, or a total of one fourth of the module. This attrition rate is fitting with the target population and resembles what Brekke et al. (1997) obtained in their study. No significant differences were observed between completers and noncompleters of the experimental group on any of the SES, psychosocial, symptomatology, or neurocognitive measures. Selection criteria included the ability to read and write; all participants were volunteers and signed a consent form (or had one signed by their private or public trustee).
No significant differences were found between the experimental and the control groups on SES. The sample was as follows: mean age of subjects 40.6 (SD = 10.7; range = 18 to 67) years; mean age at first hospitalization 24.2 (SD = 6.8; range = 12 to 51) years; mean number of years of education 10.2 (SD = 3.0, range = 4 to 23); mean number of hospitalizations 5.0 (SD = 5.25; range = 1 to 25); and mean number of years of hospitalization 12.25 (SD = 8.47; range = 5 months to 33 years). At the start of the study, 83.8% of the sample were single, 84.2% unemployed, and 78% were inpatients.