In order to study people's opinions on concepts such as mental health, mental illness and assistance in mental health, the Scale for Measuring Opinions (SMO) was built and applied. With the aim of improving the efficiency of this instrument, the present study was conducted on the basis of three criteria: a) critical analysis of the sentence and of the pertinence of each question, observing repetitions and problems understanding the sentences; b) importance of the assertion based on the total score, calculating Pearson's correlation coefficients; c) correlation of each question with the average score per category. Questions have been reformulated, regrouped or eliminated, considering their pertinence or low correlation with the average score. As a result, a 34-item SMO was obtained.
mental health; nursing; psychiatric assistance