No abstract

We describe the development and psychometric characteristics of a new version of the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ; Seligman, Abramson, Semmell, & Von Baeyer, 1979)--a version called the Attributional Style Questionnaire for Adolescents (ASQ-A)--using 3 samples (Ns = 547, 438, and 240) of Spanish secondary school students. In Study 1, the initial pool of 87 items was reduced to 54. Study 2 further analyzed the 54 scale items and revealed that the Internality, Stability, and Globality subscale scores had good reliability, good factorial construct validity, and satisfactory associations with maladaptive mood ratings. In Study 3, the regression analyses showed good and specific predictive validities of ASQ-A subscales for the attributions that the adolescents made about a particular real-life stressful situation. Study 4 showed that over an 8-month period the changes in the Stability and Globality subscales depended on the intensity of stressful life events experienced in this period. Overall, the studies revealed that the new ASQ-A served as an appropriate instrument to assess attributional style in adolescents.

This study used an actor–partner interdependence model to assess the relationship between differentiation of self and family functioning in a sample of 118 heterosexual Spanish couples, with additional attention to family structural correlates, including age of the children, number of children in the household, and educational level. Results showed a significant actor effect, with greater differentiation of self levels predicting better family functioning within individuals. Implications for mental health professionals regarding differentiation are provided.

It is hypothesized that there might be two subtypes of dysphoria. Comparison of the characteristic deficits of attributional styles and social skills of adolescent dysphorics differentiated them into two subtypes. This suggested that matched treatments of the two subtypes of dysphoria might be more effective than non-matched treatments. As is predicted by the hopelessness theory of depression (Alloy, Abramson, Metalsky, & Hartlage, 1988), dysphorics characterized by the depressogenic attributional style and adequate social skills reported significantly greater numbers of negative life-events than dysphorics characterized by social-skill deficits and healthy attributional style. Treatments matched to dysphoria subtypes were more effective than non-matched treatments. The authors suggest that similar tests of dysphorics over several years might indicate that some dysphoric states intensify and that matched treatments would abort potentially severe depressions.

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