The functional significance of changed responses in a psychoneurotic inventory.

Abstract

An inventory composed of 42 items selected from the original Woodworth personal data sheet on the basis of their discriminatory power was given to 147 women students. A retest was given 4 weeks later. Significant correlations were found between: the changed responses and the frequency of unfavorable responses; the changed responses and those items which were answered in the unfavorable direction at each testing (same scores); the changed responses and the critical ratios between the extremes of the subjects; the frequency of neurotic response and the critical ratio. From these results it was concluded that analyses of the frequency with which responses were changed in answering a psychoneurotic inventory must take into consideration the frequency with which there were neurotic answers to the items. An analysis of the items showed that the responses were changed most frequently to those items which used the word "often" in connection with a symptom and which made no statement concerning the number of times the symptom had been experienced by the subject. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)