Objective - This paper reports on acceptability and test-retest reliability of the Verona Expectations for Care Scale (VECS) and the Verona Service Satisfaction Scale (VSSS), two newly developed, multidimensional instruments which measure expectations and satisfaction with community-based psychiatric services (CPS) in patients and their relatives. Instruments - VECS and VSSS consist of various sections and include questions eliciting spontaneous answers and an 82-item multidimensional questionnaire on various aspects of clients' interaction with psychiatric services. Setting - The South-Verona community-based psychiatric service. Subiects - The patients were selected among those who, according to the South-Verona Psychiatric Case Register, were living with their families in the South-Verona catchment area and had had more than 18 contacts with the South-Verona CPS in the three years preceeding the interview. For each patient, the relative identified by professionals and patients as primarily involved in caring for the patient in the given period was asked to participate. Results - Acceptability of VECS and VSSS to subjects was good: most items were easily understood and all subjects cooperated and gave accurate evaluations. The test-retest reliability (1-2 weeks interval) of VECS and VSSS was good in patients and relatives both when considering item-by-item percentage agreement and Cohen's weighted kappa in each dimension. Conclusions - The findings presented in this paper demonstrate that it is possible to measure subjective aspects of the interaction with a psychiatric service such as expectations and satisfaction in an acceptable and reliable way and that VECS and VSSS have good performance in the psychometric properties studied.