Summarizes issues associated with psychological assessment, concluding that: psychological test validity is strong and is comparable to medical test validity; distinct assessment methods provide unique sources of information; and clinicians who rely solely on interviews are prone to incomplete understandings. Suggests that multimethod assessment…

A comparison of the two leading indices of moral development, the Defining Issues Test and the Moral Dilemma Interview, was made using 215 subjects ranging in age from 12 to 25. Correlation between the two tests was low when age, socioeconomic status, and intelligence variables were partialed out. (Author/SS)

Responds to an article questioning the construct validity of the Beck Hopelessness Scale. Suggests that social desirability should not be invoked as a potential confound unless the obtained covariation is theoretically inconsistent or is so overlapping as to make the respective scales redundant with respect to factorial content. (Author/RC)

States that the correlation between social desirability (SD) and hopelessness is open to several interpretations, but, in the absence of further data, concern for false-negative rates dictates caution in interpreting hopelessness scores when assessing suicidal behavior. Presents data on the relationship of SD, hopelessness, and prediction of…

The present study investigated the comparative interpretive efficacy of the Faschingbauer Abbreviated MMPI (FAM) and standard MMPI with a sample of psychiatric inpatients. A secondary goal was to estimate the functioning effective test length of the FAM as compared to the standard MMPI. (Author/RK)

Evaluation of the Child Dissociative Checklist found it to be a reliable and valid observer report measure of dissociation in children, including sexually abused girls and children with dissociative disorder and with multiple personality disorder. The checklist, which is appended, is intended as a clinical screening instrument and research measure…

Assessed the criterion validity of the Relational Communication Control Coding System. Undergraduates listened to audiotaped interactions of a pair they were told were husband and wife, or a counselor and client, each loaded with a symmetrical or complementary communication control pattern. Subjects' perceptions of the control patterns were…

An experimental study examined the possibility that proximity error could bias results from semantic differential questionnaires. Proximity error occurs when, due to the ordering, or polarity, of the differential scales, one answer on the semantic differential results in another answer to a subsequent question being substantially changed from what…

A series of studies and analyses to develop brief, reliable measures of intelligence and achievement motivation that would be feasible for use in a cross-sectional sample is summarized. One measure of intelligence meets these criteria. It is a 13-item test of sentence completion skill, which correlates effectively with other measures of…