The validity of certain questions which purport to measure neurotic tendencies.

Abstract

A study was made of the B1-N neurotic tendency scale (Bernreuter Personality Inventory) with the following groups of patients at the New York Psychiatric Institute: manic-depressive (manic), manic-depressive (depressed), dementia praecox, psychoneurosis, and "others" (general paralysis, psychopathic personality, etc.). The test does not clearly determine neurotic tendency in individual psychiatric patients. A comparison of case history items with answers on the neurotic tendency scale shows a 73% mean agreement. The greatest source of disagreement seems to be in contradiction between case history and patient's opinion on the questionnaire. A study of the most diagnostic items shows that "Yes" answers tend to have a high agreement with outside validating criteria. The method of internal consistency applied to this scale with normal and psychotic cases shows a similar distribution of scores for both groups. A high score on the neurotic scale is indicative of maladjustment, but a low score does not necessarily signify emotional stability.

Identifying Causes of Disagreement Between Self‐Reports and Spouse Ratings of Personality

“…Different interpretations arose when spouses attended to different parts of the item, or understood qualifiers like rarely or often differently, or construed the meaning of words differently. This reason for disagreement and inaccuracy in personality assessments was noted as long ago as the 1930s (Benton, 1935;Landis & Katz, 1934), 2 but has been given relatively little attention since. Different interpretation of items was followed in frequency by a diverse set of other reasons, including differences in the specific behaviors, time frames, or roles considered when responding to items; insufficient information or insight into covert feelings and attitudes; and simple clerical errors.…”

The K factor as a suppressor variable in the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.

“…One of the most important failings of almost all structured personality tests is their susceptibility to "faking" or "lying" in one way or another, as well as their even greater susceptibility to unconscious self-deception and role-playing on the part of individuals who may be consciously quite honest and sincere in their responses. The possibility of such factors having an invalidating effect upon the scores obtained has been mentioned by many writers, including Adams (1941), Allport (1928Allport ( , 1937Allport ( , 1942, Bernreuter (1933aBernreuter ( ,b, 1940, Bills (1941), Bordin (1943), Eisenberg and Wesman (1941), Guilford and Guilford (1936), Humm and Humm (1944), Humm and Wadsworth (1935), Kelly, Miles and Terman (1936), Laird (1925), Landis and Katz (1934), Maller (1930), Olson (1936), Rosenzweig (1934Rosenzweig ( , 1938, Ruch (1942), Strong (1943), Symonds (1932), Vernon (1934), Washburne (1935), Willoughby [and Morse] (1936) and others. One of the assumed advantages of the projective methods is that they are relatively less influenced by such distorting factors, although this assumption should be critically evaluated.…”

A Factorial Analysis of Items in the Bernreuter Personality Inventory

“…But such a procedure hardly constitutes an adequate validati~n.~ Other researches on the validity of the scales present a less optimistic picture. Thus Landis and his co-workers found that none of the Bernreuter scales would differentiate groups of normal spdents from groups of psychoneurolic and psychotic patients (13,14) ; and Mosier believes that their conclusion concerning the validity of the test is probably the best guide to its use." He adds that this does not necessarily detract from the value of the information that may be derived from an examinee's replies to questions separately considered ( ( 5 ) p. 51).…”