The Perfil de las Consecuencias de la Enfermedad (PCE), the Spanish version of the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP), was administered to 352 individuals who were grouped into 4 subsamples according to type and severity of illness. Differences among scores in the subsamples were used for assessing the discriminating ability of the PCE and correlation of PCE scores with theoretically comparable measures for convergent validity. Test-retest reliability was studied in a subgroup of 129 patients. The PCE scores correlated well with self-perceived overall health (0.53), self-assessment of sickness (0.51), self-assessment of dysfunction (0.63), the Index of Restricted Activity (0.54), and the Index of Activities of Daily Living (0.45). A poor correlation with clinicians' assessment of dysfunction (0.29) and speech therapists' assessment of speech pathology (0.23) was found. Reproducibility across illnesses (0.95-0.98), types of administration (0.96-0.98), and interviewers (0.93-0.99) was very high. The PCE is equivalent to the original instrument in terms of validity and reliability, which allows its use in international studies.