Faking "chance" on the SVIB.

Are scores that fall within the so-called "chance" areas of certain occupational scales of the Strong Vocational Interest Blank for Men (SVIB) "easily obtainable by chance"? To answer this question, Ss were selected whose scores, under standard testing conditions, were either higher than chance, lower than chance, or in the chance area itself. These Ss were then instructed to "fake" directionally (in the direction of the chance area) and to "fake chance." The results indicated that Ss who can fake directionally cannot fake chance, even when the chance range is in the same direction as the one they have faked. It was concluded that rather than ignore scores within the chance area, it may be better to ignore the chance areas themselves. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multidimensional perception of counselor behavior.

Investigated S. R. Strong's prediction of the existence of 3 dimensions of perceived counselor behavior: expertness, attractiveness, and trustworthiness. Films of interviews given by C. Rogers, A. Ellis, and F. Perls were watched by 202 Ss, who rated each counselor on 36 bipolar scales. Ratings were then factor-analyzed separately for each counselor. Results support the existence of the hypothesized dimensions for Rogers and Perls but only 2 dimensions for Ellis. Implications of results for counseling and further research are discussed. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stability of vocational interests among the intellectually gifted from adolescence to adulthood: A 15-year longitudinal study.

A sample of 162 intellectually gifted adolescents (top 1%) were administered the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory at age 13. Fifteen years later, they were administered the Strong again. This study evaluated the intra- and interindividual temporal stability of the 6 RIASEC (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional) themes and the Strong's 23 Basic Interest Scales. Over the 15-year test-retest interval, RlASEC's median interindividual correlation for the 6 themes was .46; the median of all 162 intraindividual correlations was .57. Configural analyses of the most dominant theme at age 13 revealed that this theme was significantly more likely than chance to be either dominant or adjacent to the dominant theme at age 28—following RlASEC's hexagonal structure. For intellectually gifted individuals, it appears to be possible to forecast salient features of their adult RIASEC profile by assessing their vocational interests during early adolescence, but some RIASEC themes seem more stable than others. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Change on SVIB: Dice or men?

The profile report form for the strong Vocational Interest Blank has shaded areas, established by throwing dice, to indicate chance scores on the various scales. The SVIB manual suggests that this shaded area be used as a reference point to determine if a given score is significant. This article suggests that the shaded areas should be determined by scores of the Men-in-General group instead of throwing dice. The effect of this on the shaded area is shown on a sample profile report form. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory Alcohol Abuse and Drug Abuse scales and the identification of substance-abuse patients.

This study investigated the effectiveness of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory Alcohol- and Drug-Abuse scales in identifying known alcohol and drug abusers in a sample of 561 adult psychiatric inpatients (408 women and 153 men). Only 43% of the alcoholics and 49% of the drug abusers were identified with the recommended base rate cutoff score of 75. False-positive rates were greater than 50% for each scale, and the scales had a significant positive intercorrelation. Although this study may have some limitations regarding how substance-abuse diagnoses were determined, these findings raise questions about the validity and clinical utility of these scales. Further studies of the item composition and effectiveness of these scales, as well as comparisons with other approaches to substance abuse assessment, are indicated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A quantitative review of the Guilty Knowledge Test.

The guilty knowledge polygraph test (GKT; D. T. Lykken, 1959, 1960) is a psychophysiological method of identifying suspects with concealed information about a crime. A meta-analysis of 50 treatment groups drawn from 22 laboratory simulation studies (total N?=?1,247) was conducted to provide a comprehensive estimate of GKT accuracy under controlled conditions. Electrodermal measures correctly identified 76% of participants with concealed knowledge and 83% of those without information. Informed participants were detected at rates significantly in excess of chance, with a mean weighted effect size of .57. Enactment of mock crimes increased the hit rate to 82%. The rates of false-positive error among noninformed treatment groups did not significantly exceed chance. Applications and research directions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concurrent prediction from the Strong Vocational Interest Blank.

Compared the concurrent predictive accuracy of the Strong Vocational Interest Blank for Men (SVIB), Form T-399, for the same Ss (N = 163) on 3 sets of scales developed for the SVIB to reflect J. L. Holland's occupational-personality types: the SVIB-Holland scales, the Basic Interest scales, and the Occupational scales. Data are reported to provide comparison between the SVIB-Holland scales and Holland's Self-Directed Search with different Ss, between the Basic Interest scales and Occupational scales for the same Ss, between the criteria of single highest scale and scores above a cutoff, and between the 3 types of scales. When cutoff scores were used, the SVIB-Holland scales and the Basic Interest scales predicted occupation held for some 60% of these Ss; about 1/3 of these accurate predictions were considered to be attributable to chance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Scholastic achievement of extension and regular college students.

In a course on personnel management, the learning achieved in a class of 39 day students was compared with that of a class of 39 evening students. Each class was given both a pretest and an identical posttest for each of two units of the course content. The pretest means of the day students did not differ significantly from the posttest means of the evening students; and the posttest means of the evening students differed from a chance score by less than an amount significant at the 5 per cent level of confidence. "In view of the obtained results, a question was raised about the advisability of granting college credit for work performed in evening off-campus extension courses." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Item subtlety in personality inventory scales.

The study investigated the relationship between the discriminating power and subtlety of items in inventory scales validated against external criteria. The Hy, Pd, and Sc scales of the MMPI were used. Item discrimination was based on differentiation between a normal group (N = 541) and 3 hospitalized clinical groups (N from 40-100). Item subtlety was in terms of the judgments of 2 samples of 33 and 25 advanced doctoral students in clinical and counseling psychology. A significant relationship was found between subtlety and discrimination for the items of each scale, at the .01 level for the Hy and Pd scales and the .05 level for the Sc scale. Only about 40% of the most subtle Hy and Pd scale items discriminated (the Sc scale contained few extremely subtle items) as contrasted to over 90% of the most obvious items in each of the 3 scales. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correspondence between Mini-Mult and standard MMPI scale scores in patients with neurological disease.

Explored the possible utility of the Mini-Mult vs the standard MMPI in 18 patients with left hemisphere lesions, 18 with right hemisphere lesions, and 18 non-brain-damaged medical controls. Close correspondence was found between mean Mini-Mult and standard MMPI scale scores for all scales except scale 9. Although all correlations were significant beyond the .01 level, only scales L, K, 1, 2, and 3 reached acceptable levels of equivalence. The Mini-Mult correctly predicted the MMPI high-scale score only 55.5% of the time. It is suggested that the poor predictive value of the Mini-Mult for the individual, despite adequate group prediction, reflects weakness in the test rather than sampling differences due to severity of illness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Real-life" faking on the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule by sales applicants.

This study investigated possible faking of the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule in an industrial selection situation. EPPS scores for 97 Retail sales applicants and 66 Industrial sales applicants (all later hired) were compared to those of scores of 69 Retail salesmen and 49 Industrial salesmen (all tested on the job). Results showed that Retail applicants tended to score significantly higher on Orderliness, Intraception, and Dominance scales and lower on the Heterosexuality scale than Retail salesman. No significant differences were found, however, between Industrial applicants and Industrial salesmen. This suggests that persons more oriented toward selling in terms of interests and personality (i. e., Retail sales applicants) are more likely to distort answers to the EPPS. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparison of Flesch readability scores with a test of reading comprehension.

101 high school seniors, who had taken the Diagnostic Reading Test, read ten 100-word passages judged to be of equal interest but varied systematically in Reading Ease score from 5 to 95 at 10-point intervals and took brief objective-type Comprehension Tests on them. "In general, differences between mean comprehension scores for adjacent RE levels were significant at the 5% level. From these findings it is inferred the Flesch RE scores do adequately estimate the comparative difficulty in comprehension of 'popular' reading material for a 17- to 18-year-old group." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Permanence of measured vocational interests of adult males.

For 109 males tested on the Strong VIB in 1931 and in 1941, permanence of interest was measured by (a) test-retest rank-order correlations over 44 occupational scales for each subject, (b) total score test-retest correlations for the 44 scales, (c) mean test-retest score difference for each scale, and (d) differences in group patterns from test to retest. "… vocational interests of adult males… are remarkably stable when permanence is measured by the 4 methods… ." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perception of timing of kinesthetic stimuli

A psychophysical method was used to estimate the timing of perception of kinesthetic stimuli with different velocities in normal volunteers. A 1 ms auditory click occurred randomly before or after an imposed flexion movement at either 20, 40 or 60 deg/s of the metacarpophalangeal joint. Subjects reported whether the click was perceived before or after the movement onset (experiment 1) or perception of movement velocity (experiment 2). The time at which there was a 50% chance that subjects reported movement or velocity perception after the click was taken as an estimate of the time subjects perceived the stimuli. The difference in time of perceived movement velocity discrimination and movement onset was only significant when the velocity was 20 deg/s (52 ms). This suggests that movement onset and identification of the velocity of the faster movements are perceived nearly simultaneously.     

A vocational interest scale for biologists.

A Biologist scale for the SVIB (Form M) was developed following procedures outlined by E. K. Strong, Jr. 4 groups were employed: (a) criterion (N = 251) systematically selected from Volume 2 of American Men of Science, (b) cross-validation (N = 89) selected at an American Institute of Biological Science convention, (c) 2 concurrent validation groups (Ns = 121, 306) selected from the Pennsylvania State University student body. Results indicated that the scale differentiated the interests of: (a) the biologists from Strong's men-in-general group (P1), (b) the biologists from the interests measured by 36 other SVIB scales, (c) the concurrent validation groups in the expected direction. Reliabilities of .88 (criterion) and .87 (cross-validation) were obtained. It was concluded that the scale has sufficient validity and reliability to be a useful counseling device. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Probability and utility assumptions underlying use of the Strong Vocational Interest Blank.

Decision implications of E. K. Strong's (1955) assumption of equal base rates for his men-in-general and individual occupational groups are explored, using the Strong Vocational Interest Blank (SVIB) Physician's scale as an example. It is demonstrated that when realistic base rates are assumed, total decision error rate using the SVIB-even when optimal cutting scores are employed-is at best about equal to that resulting from prediction using base rates alone. Use of the SVIB as recommended by Strong implicitly assumes that false negative errors are much more serious than are false positives. When "reasonable" utility or gain matrices are assumed, use of the SVIB can reduce total error rate despite the limitations imposed by low occupational base rates; this effect is greater when statistically optimal cutting scores, rather than those recommended by Strong, are used. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Valeurs de fréquence subjective et d'imagerie pour un échantillon de 1,916 substantifs de la langue fran?aise.

Reported norms of rated subjective frequency of use and imagery on 7-point scales for 1,916 French nouns in 454 17–29-yr-olds. Interjudge reliability was assessed by calculating the correlation between the mean ratings of items repeated in the booklet, between the mean ratings obtained from odd-numbered and even-numbered respondents, and by computing the Cronbach alpha statistic for each page of the booklet. Results indicate that although the estimates provided by female and male participants were highly correlated, the former gave a slightly higher frequency rating to the word sample but a slightly lower imagery rating than the latter did. Moreover, female respondents gave slightly more extreme ratings on the frequency and imagery scales. An analysis of the absolute difference between female and male ratings revealed a discrepancy of one half point or more on 20% of the word sample for frequency and 13% for imagery. On both scales, the mean absolute difference between male and female ratings was larger than that obtained by chance alone. The mean, standard deviation, and percentile rank of the frequency and imagery ratings for each item are appended together with their objective frequency of occurrence in Baudot's (1992) dictionary. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stability of new MMPI scales and statistical procedures for evaluating changes and differences in psychiatric patients.

Test-retest data are reported for 66 MMPI scales and utilized to illustrate some statistical procedures for answering 5 common questions in clinical practice and research: (1) Does an individual patient's specific retest score on a given scale represent a reliable change? (2) Are the scores of 2 patients significantly different? (3) How accurate is a patient's score? (4) For a patient with a score on each of 2 scales, how reliable is the difference? (5) For scores of a group of patients obtained before and after (or during) some experimental or therapeutic experience, what is the significance of a specific net change? These statistical procedures may be applied to continuous scores from a variety of tests. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aripiprazole: Effectiveness and safety under naturalistic conditions.

A retrospective study was conducted to examine aripiprazole's effectiveness and safety in a naturalistic treatment setting in both inpatients and outpatients affected by schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. All patients with schizophrenia, schizoaffective and delusional disorders, and schizoid and schizotypal personality disorders treated with aripiprazole from March 1, 2005, to March 1, 2006, in the authors' community mental health service were divided into outpatient (n=26) and inpatient (n=17) groups; the average treatment periods were 204 days and 25 days, respectively. Effectiveness was evaluated by improvement of symptoms (a 25% reduction of Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale [BPRS] score from baseline) and functioning level (a 50% increase of Global Assessment of Functioning [GAF] scale score from baseline), as well as dropout rate. Adverse effects and their impact on treatment course were also evaluated. The final scores of the 2 scales showed a statistically significant difference from baseline (BPRS: p