Jean-Michel Petot

Agreement between Parent- and Self-Reports of Algerian Adolescents' Behavioral and Emotional Problems.

The present study examined agreement between scores obtained from self-reports of behavioral and emotional problems obtained from 513 Algerian adolescents on the Youth Self-Report (YSR) with scores obtained from reports provided by their parents on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). The correlations between self- and parent-report were larger than those observed in many other cultures (e.g., intraclass correlation coefficient=0.60 and Pearson r=0.65 for Total Problems). On the whole, cross-informant agreement did not vary significantly as a function of problem type, identity of the parental informant, gender and age of the adolescent. Similar to all studied cultures, adolescents on average reported more problems than their parents reported about them, but the discrepancies were smaller than in all previous societies. Mean YSR/CBCL score discrepancies indicated higher YSR scores for several scales, but variability across dyads was large, and many dyads showed the opposite pattern.

Syndromes of collateral-reported psychopathology for ages 18-59 in 18 Societies

The purpose was to advance research and clinical methodology for assessing psychopathology by testing the international generalizability of an 8-syndrome model derived from collateral ratings of adult behavioral, emotional, social, and thought problems. Collateral informants rated 8,582 18-59-year-old residents of 18 societies on the Adult Behavior Checklist (ABCL). Confirmatory factor analyses tested the fit of the 8-syndrome model to ratings from each society. The primary model fit index (Root Mean Square Error of Approximation) showed good model fit for all societies, while secondary indices (Tucker Lewis Index, Comparative Fit Index) showed acceptable to good fit for 17 societies. Factor loadings were robust across societies and items. Of the 5,007 estimated parameters, 4 (0.08%) were outside the admissible parameter space, but 95% confidence intervals included the admissible space, indicating that the 4 deviant parameters could be due to sampling fluctuations. The findings are consistent with previous evidence for the generalizability of the 8-syndrome model in self-ratings from 29 societies, and support the 8-syndrome model for operationalizing phenotypes of adult psychopathology from multi-informant ratings in diverse societies.

Discrepancies Between the Rorschach Inkblot Method and Self-Report Measures of Personality

Because the quasi-absence of correlation between Rorschach variables and the dimensions described in academic psychology of personality is now a well-established fact, this paper reviews the main reasons which could account for this puzzling discrepancies. Some of these reasons are methodological or statistical ones, and they are linked to formal properties of variables to be correlated: raw scores, ratios, or percentages, or broader constructs operationalized by specific pattern of scores and ratios. It is emphasized that some difficulties are related to the excessive number of variables addressed in studies lacking theoretical hypotheses, as to the categorical nature of many Rorschach variables, which opposes the dimensional nature of the constructs of academic personality psychology. More fundamentally, it is suggested that, as exemplified by introversion and introversiveness, psychological realities assessed by the Rorschach differ from those conceptualized by personality psychology not only by their ...

Are the Relationships Between NEO PI-R and Rorschach Markers of Openness to Experience Dependent on the Patient’s Test-Taking Attitude?

The low correlations reported between self-report measures and the Rorschach raise questions about the validity of both kinds of instruments. Meyer (1996) suggested that these low correlations are an artefact, due to the failure to control response style. Correlations would be high and positive when subjects have the same response style on both methods, and high and negative when they have divergent response styles. But response style is assessed according to criteria strongly connected with distress, and the enhancement of correlations may be tautologically limited to distress scales. The objective of this research is to verify whether the response style hypothesis applies to Openness to Experience, a dimension unrelated with distress. Correlations were computed between on the one hand Openness and Neuroticism, and on the second one several selected Rorschach variables. Analyses were conducted on the whole sample (n = 96) and on separate subgroups of patients with convergent (n = 29) or divergent (n = 22...