A factorial study of personal development of unmarried mothers, college, alcoholic, and schizophrenic populations,

Abstract
Reported the results of a factor analytic study of the Personal Development Study (PDS). The PDS was administered for research purposes to four diagnostic groups, which included 89 institutionalized alcoholics, 336 unmarried mothers, 159 college students, and 388 chronic schizophrenics. A principal component factor analysis with Varimax rotation performed on the combined populations (N = 972) yielded five main factors labeled as projection, optimism-responsibility, reaction and symptom formation, repressive-compulsive, and intropunitiveness-guilt. Analysis of base rates of responding to the individual items revealed that the four populations ranged along a continuum, with the normals at one extreme and the institutionalized schizophrenics at the other extreme of greater pathological responding.