The Psychometric Characteristics of an Adult Glass in Psychology

Abstract

The avowed intention of a recent paper by Dann (1964) on psychological disturbance in students of psychology was to encourage others to collect and publish further data. It was suggested by that writer that “the general impression amongst doctors” was that students and ex-students of psychology suffer more from psychiatric disorders than do other members of the population. Taking a sample of students reading psychology at University College, Swansea and comparing it with students reading other subjects at the same College, Dann found a statistically significantly greater proportion of the former to exhibit psychiatric disorder, mostly of a neurotic or psychosomatic sort. The criterion of when a consultation became one for a psychiatric disorder was subjective and “was stretched fairly widely”, and there is no information about whether the consultant was or was not aware of what course the student was on before arriving at the diagnosis.