Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Vol. 3, No. 2, 19 74
Correlations Between the Offer Self-lmage Questionnaire for Adolescents and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory in a Psychiatric Hospital Population Erich Coch~ 1 and Shirley Taylor 2
Received February 27, 1974
In an attempt to learn more about the validity o f the Offer Self-Image Questionnaire for Adolescents (OSQ), the 11 scale scores for 14 male and 26 female adolescent patients in a private psychiatric hospi'tal were correlated with their scores on 13 o f the 14 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) Scales. O f the 144 correlations calculated, 27% were significant at least at the 0.05 level and 5% were significant at the 0.01 level The OSQ seems to be measuring depression, anxiety, and self-devaluation as they affect emotional tone, mastery o f external problems, psychopathology, and adjustment. Further work needs to be done with normal adolescents concerning the validity o f the OSQ scales. Additional research on the lmpulse Control and Social Relationship scales is especially needed to determine the exact meaning o f these scales. A review o f some o f the pertinent literature shows that self-report methods are appropriate and efficient in clinical work and research with adolescents. A general comparison o f the OSQ and the MMPI shows that the MMPI has the advantage o f good validity scales and other statistical properties, while the OSQ appears more attractive because o f its appropriateness for adolescents.
Director of Psychological Services and Research at Friends Hospital in Philadelphia and Clinical Assistant Professor at Hahnemann Medical College; received Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Bonn in West Germany. Address: Friends Hospital, Roosevelt Boulevard at Adams Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19124. 2Senior college student majoring in psychology at Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, Michigan.
145 9
P l e n u m Publishing C o r p o r a t i o n , 2 2 7 West 1 7 t h Street, N e w Y o r k , N . Y . 1 0 0 1 1 . N o
part of this publication m a y be r e p r o d u c e d , stored in a retrieval s y s t e m , or t r a n s m i t t e d , in a n y f o r m o r b y a n y means, electronic, mechanical, p h o t o c o p y i n g , m i c r o f i l m i n g , recording, or otherwise, without w r i t t e n permission o f the Publisher.
146
Coch6 and Taylor
INTRODUCTION The Offer Self-Image Questionnaire for Adolescents (OSQ) is a selfdescriptive personality test which has been developed to measure adolescents' adjustment in 11 areas considered important in the psychological world of the teenager. The results from this test are in the form of scores for each of the following 11 scales: Impulse Control, Emotional Tone, Body and Self Image, Social Relationship, Morals, Sexual Attitudes, Family Relationship, Mastery of External Problems, Vocational-Educational Goals, Psychopathology, and Superior Adjustment. The scores can range from 1 to 6, with the lower ones being more desirable. Using the 0SQ, norms have been established for male and female, for older and younger, and for normal and disturbed adolescents; yet the work on the validity of the OSQ is still in progress. Some attempts to evaluate the validity of the OSQ have been made by the use of analyses of variance and t tests computed to determine the extent to which each scale discriminates between various subgroups of a sample (Offer and Howard, 1972). These subgroups were determined on such variables as age, sex, American or Australian nationality, and normal or disturbed adjustment. The latter was determined by the S's admission to a psychiatric hospital or clinic. To increase the clinical usefulness of the OSQ, further studies, particularly regarding its validity, are needed. The investigation presented here was therefore designed to explore the areas of overlap between the OSQ and the MMPI. The expectation is that scales on either test which are reputed to be sensitive to similar personality traits will correlate highly. This should result in new information about the validity of either method with populations of disturbed adolescents. METHOD
Subjects Ss were 14 male and 26 female adolescents between the ages of 14and 21 (average age 16.43, SD 1.599) in a small private psychiatric hospital. The subjects were mostly white and came from urban and suburban areas and from all social classes. They were quite similar to the subjects previously used by other investigators to establish the norms for the OSQ (Offer, 1971). Instruments The instruments used were the OSQ and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. The MMPI was chosen because it provides "an objective
Offer Serf-Image Questionnaire for Adolescents and the MMPI
147
assessment of some of the major personality characteristics that affect personal and social adjustment" (Dahlstrom and Welsh, 1960, p. 3).
Procedure
Soon after the Ss were admitted to the hospital, they completed the MMPI as a part of their intake battery of tests. The OSQ was fiUed out within 2 working days after the subjects were admitted to the hospital's Young People's Unit (YPU). The Ss' test data had to meet the following criteria to be included in the study: (a) the OSQ did not have more than ten unanswered or doubly marked questions out of the 146 total questions, (b) the OSQ and MMPI were both completed within a 20-day period of each other, (c) the MMPI's ?, L and K scales (three of the four validity scales) were at or below a T score of 70, (d) the MMPI F scale (the fourth validity scale) was at or under a T score of 90, but (e) if t h e MMPI F scale was between a T s c o r e of 80 and a T s c o r e of 90 the subject had to have a score of 12 or more on the MMPI Test-Retest (Tr) scale (Coch6 and Steer, 1974). This last condition was added to insure the validity of MMPI prof'des where there was a suspicion of random answering because of a high F score.
Data Analysis
The data consisted of each S's score on all 11 scales of the OSQ and his score on 13 of the 14 basic MMPI scales. The Mf (Masculinity-Femininity) scale was not used because it is scored in opposite directions for males and females; thus combining male and female scores would be misleading. Furthermore, it did not appear useful for the purposes of this study. The correlation between subjects' OSQ and MMPI scores was calculated using the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient.
RESULTS Table I presents the correlation matrix derived. Of the 143 correlation coefficients, 39 (27%) are significant at least at the 0.05 level, with seven (5%) significant at the 0.01 level. The OSQ scales which correlate at significant levels with at least six of the MMPI scales are Emotional Tone, Mastery of External Problems, Psychopathology, and Superior Adjustment. The MMPI scales which correlate at significant levels with all four of these OSQ scales are Hs (Hypochondriasis), D (Depression), Hy (Hysteria), Pt (Psychasthenia), and Si (Social Introversion).
148
Coch~ and Taylo~
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0
0
c~
-am, O~
0 ~.0 v
o
c5~c5c~c5c~c5c~c~c5 c~
r~
"0 ,.Q 0
~o
0 EJ
~
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.,,_,
~vv
Offer Self-Image Questionnaire for Adolescents and the MMPI
149
DISCUSSION
The scales of the two tests correlate at significant levels much more often than would be expected by chance. Most of the significant correlations are easily understood, although there are a few exceptions. The OSQ Imptilse Control scale (scale 1) appears to be measuring the effectiveness of the adolescents' defense mechanisms. The MMPI F, D, and Pt scales correlate with the Impulse Control scale, indicating that a high score on the first OSQ scale (i.e., low impulse control) is associated with mental agitation and ruminative self-doubt connected with a depression. The Impulse Control scale does not seem to measure the tendency to act out aggressively since none of the scales of the Pd-Pa-Ma (Psychopathic Deviation, Paranoia, Mania) combination correlates with it at a significant level. The Emotional Tone scale (2) correlates significantly with the F scale and all the clinical scales except Pd and Ma. Thus the Emotional Tone scale seems to be measuring not only depression but also psychopathology in general. Scale 3, Body and Self Image, reflects the degree of self-devaluation and resulting depression; it correlates significantly with the Pt and D scales. There are a number of unexpected results concerning the Social Relationship scale (4). It correlates negatively with the ? scale at a 0.02 significance level, indicating that Ss with poor interpersonal relationships leave more items blank than others. Scale 4 does not correlate with the Pd scale, although high scorers on the Pd scale are reputed to have shallow social relationships (Carson, 1969). It also does not correlate significantly with the Si scale, which supposedly is an "index of comfort in interpersonal relationships" (Carson, 1969, p. 259). Scale 5, Morals, shows no real similarity with any of the MMPI scales, as might be expected. The Sexual Attitudes scale (6) correlates significantly only with the D scale, indicating that poor adjustment concerning sexual feelings, attitudes, and behavior may be connected with depression. The Family Relationship (7) scale does not seem to be measuring the same variables as the MMPI and does not correlate significantly with any of the MMPI scales. Scale 8, Mastery of External Problems, correlates highly with the F scale and every clinical scale except Ma. It correlates with the D, Pt, Sc, and Si scale at the 0.01 level. This OSQ scale appears to be the one which best reflects differences in the ability to adjust among disturbed adolescents. Scale 9, Vocational-Educational Goals, does not correlate significantly with any of the MMPI scales. This is to be expected considering the differences in content which the scales are covering. The Psychopathology scale (10) correlates significantly with the F scale and all of the clinical scales except Pd and Ma. Its factorial structure is apparently quite similar to that of scale 8. Factor-analytic studies of the MMPI (Welsh, 1956) have shown that these scales which covary so highly with scale 10 of the
150
Coch~ and Taylor
OSQ are heavily loaded with the first factor, generally described as anxiety or general emotional upset (factor A) and with the second factor (factor R) labeled "social dependency." Scale 11, Superior Adjustment, shows a pattern of correlations very similar to that of scales i 0 and 8. Apparently it also is mostly an indicator of general psychopathology, at least as far as the MMPI and our patient population are concerned. The fact that scale 11 does not correlate significantly with the F and Pa scales, however, seems to indicate that the Superior Adjustment scale is less sensitive than the Psychopathology scale to some severe symptoms of maladjustment. The results of this study thus seem to suggest that the OSQ primarily taps depression, anxiety, and self-devaluation as they affect emotional tone, mastery of external problems, psychopathology, and adjustment. A similar study involving normal adolescents appears desirable. A factor analysis of the OSQ scales would also be helpful to understand the present findings. The inferences which may be drawn from this study are limited by the instruments and the sample used. It should be noted that the OSQ and the MMPI have very different underlying theories. The OSQ was developed from research on the normal adolescent (Offer and Sabshin, 1963), while the MMPI was basically constructed for use in an adult population using disease entities as its categories. Hathaway and Monachesi (1963) present an extensive collection of data gathered by the administration of the MMPI to a vast sample of adolescents most of whom can be considered "normal." Considering this kind of population, they too are somewhat hesitant to use an instrument designed for adults and based on diagnostic entities. However, they give some rather practical reasons for doing so (see p. 32) and conclude that their data do not contradict the interpretations generally applied to adult prof'fles. Thus the meaning of the clinical scales seems to be approximately the same for adolescents and for adults. Another consideration is that this study was based on a population of disturbed adolescents. Data from a "normal" population might look quite different. Although the present study indicates that findings from two very different self-report instruments are internally consistent and that the data gathered by these two techniques support each other, the question remains how useful selfreport data from adolescent respondents are. Several authors have approached this question experimentally. DeCharms etal. (1955)compared information regarding the need for achievement gathered from the TAT with similar information obtained from self-reports. Both methods yielded results which were meaningful in their own right but quite different in their interpretive content. Similarly, Sherwood (1966) compared self-report and TAT data as predictors of actual behavior. In predicting achievement behavior, neither of the two methods proved superior to the other but a combination of the two was a better predictor than either approach alone. Comparing their accuracy in predicting affiliation behavior, Sherwood found more complicated differences: the TAT was a better
Offer Self-ImageQuestionnaire for Adolescents and the MMPI
151
predictor for males, the self-report better for females. However, for male students who described themselves as more revealing, the self-reported need for affiliation was indeed significantly related to their affiliative behavior. Child e t al. (1956) found questionnaires generally more reliable and more valid in predicting observable behavior than TAT stories. Other self-report techniques used successfully with adolescents include the Adjective Check List (Schaefer, 1969) and the IPAT Jr.-Sr. High School Personality Questionnaire (Lessing, 1972). Even though these findings are encouraging, a great deal of work is still needed. Particularly the influence of social desirability and of "response set" on the results obtained from self-report methods needs to be examined very carefully. This is also true for the OSQ. Furthermore, the MMPI appears to have an advantage over other self-report instruments because of its "validity scales," which give indications of faking, concealing, or random responding. Other questionnaires like the OSQ would do well to also include such safety devices. On the other hand, the use of simple true-false dichotomies on instruments like the MMPI seems to us to be a disadvantage of these methods when used with adolescents. Steiner (1956) points out the increase in accuracy obtained by allowing more choices per item, as is the case for the OSQ. Our own experience with both methods tends to confirm Steiner's view, although we have no experimental support for this. The actual administration of self-report instruments presents very few problems, as Hathaway and Monachesi also point out. Most teenagers respond favorably to a questionnaire which requires them to think about themselves. Although the adolescent may still be lacking in skills when it comes to the verbal expression of intimate needs and feelings, he is indeed frequently preoccupied with questions about his personality and identity. Thus he may welcome the opportunity to respond to such questions, especially if he feels that they are appropriate to his life situation. In this latter respect, the MMPI usually provokes more resistance from our young patients than the OSQ. The considerable length of the MMPI further contributes to greater resistance. Comparison of the two methods thus points to some advantages and shortcomings on both sides. While the OSQ appears more desirable in its appropriateness to adolescence and its underlying theory, the MMPI has the advantage of the validity scales and a great deal of past research into its statistical properties. Further studies are necessary to enhance the usefulness of the OSQ for the clinician dealing with adolescents experiencing problems in living, but the results so far are quite encouraging. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors wish to express their gratitude to Ralph C. Wiggins for his help in the statistical analysis of the data and to Evan Mason for her help in the review of the literature.
152
Coeh~ and Taylor REFERENCES
Carson, R. C. (1969). Interpretive manual to the MMPI. In Butcher, J. N. (ed.), MMPI: Research Developments and Clinical Applications, McGraw-Hill, New York. Child, I. L., Frank, K. F., and Storm, T. (1956). Self-ratings and TAT: Their relations to each other and to childhood background. J. Personal. 25:96-114. Coch~, E., and Steer, R. A. (1974). The MMPI response consistencies of normal, neurotic, and psychotic women. 3". Clin. Psychol. 30:194-195. Dahlstrom, W. G., and Welsh, G. S. (1960). An MMPI Handbook. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. DeCharms, R. C., Morrison, H. W., Reitman, W. R., and McClelland, D. C. (1955). Behavioral correlates of directly and indirectly measured achievement motivation. In MeClelland, D. C. (ed.), Studies in Motivation, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York. Hathaway, S. R., and Monachesi, E. D. (1963). Adolescent Personality and Behavior, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Lessing, E. I. (1972). Predictive validity of the 1PAT Jr.-St. High School Personality Questionnaire as a measure of neuroticism.J. Clin. Psychol. 28:179-183. Offer, D. (1971). The Offer Self-Image Questionnaire for Adolescents- a Manual. Unpublished manuscript, Institute for Psychosomatic and Psychiatric Research and Training, Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago. Offer, D., and Howard, K. I. (1972). An empirical analysis of the Offer Self-Image Questionnaire for Adolescents. Arch. Gen. Psychiat. 27:529-533. Offer, D., and Sabshin, M. (1963). The psychiatrist and the normal adolescent. Arch. Gen. Psychiat. 9:427-432. Schaefer, C. E. (1969). The self-concept of creative adolescents. J. Psychol. 72:233-242. Sherwood, J. J. (1966). Self-report and projective measures of achievement and affiliation. J. Consult. Psychol. 30:329-337. Steiner, I. D. (1956). Self-perception and goal-setting behavior. J. Personal. 25:344-355. Welsh, G. S. (1956). Factor dimensions A and K. In Welsh, G. S., and Dahlstrom, W. G. (eds.), Basic Readings on the MMPI in Psychology and Medicine, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Correlations Between the Offer Self-lmage Questionnaire for Adolescents and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory in a Psychiatric Hospital Population Erich Coch~ 1 and Shirley Taylor 2
Received February 27, 1974
In an attempt to learn more about the validity o f the Offer Self-Image Questionnaire for Adolescents (OSQ), the 11 scale scores for 14 male and 26 female adolescent patients in a private psychiatric hospi'tal were correlated with their scores on 13 o f the 14 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) Scales. O f the 144 correlations calculated, 27% were significant at least at the 0.05 level and 5% were significant at the 0.01 level The OSQ seems to be measuring depression, anxiety, and self-devaluation as they affect emotional tone, mastery o f external problems, psychopathology, and adjustment. Further work needs to be done with normal adolescents concerning the validity o f the OSQ scales. Additional research on the lmpulse Control and Social Relationship scales is especially needed to determine the exact meaning o f these scales. A review o f some o f the pertinent literature shows that self-report methods are appropriate and efficient in clinical work and research with adolescents. A general comparison o f the OSQ and the MMPI shows that the MMPI has the advantage o f good validity scales and other statistical properties, while the OSQ appears more attractive because o f its appropriateness for adolescents.
Director of Psychological Services and Research at Friends Hospital in Philadelphia and Clinical Assistant Professor at Hahnemann Medical College; received Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Bonn in West Germany. Address: Friends Hospital, Roosevelt Boulevard at Adams Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19124. 2Senior college student majoring in psychology at Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, Michigan.
145 9
P l e n u m Publishing C o r p o r a t i o n , 2 2 7 West 1 7 t h Street, N e w Y o r k , N . Y . 1 0 0 1 1 . N o
part of this publication m a y be r e p r o d u c e d , stored in a retrieval s y s t e m , or t r a n s m i t t e d , in a n y f o r m o r b y a n y means, electronic, mechanical, p h o t o c o p y i n g , m i c r o f i l m i n g , recording, or otherwise, without w r i t t e n permission o f the Publisher.
146
Coch6 and Taylor
INTRODUCTION The Offer Self-Image Questionnaire for Adolescents (OSQ) is a selfdescriptive personality test which has been developed to measure adolescents' adjustment in 11 areas considered important in the psychological world of the teenager. The results from this test are in the form of scores for each of the following 11 scales: Impulse Control, Emotional Tone, Body and Self Image, Social Relationship, Morals, Sexual Attitudes, Family Relationship, Mastery of External Problems, Vocational-Educational Goals, Psychopathology, and Superior Adjustment. The scores can range from 1 to 6, with the lower ones being more desirable. Using the 0SQ, norms have been established for male and female, for older and younger, and for normal and disturbed adolescents; yet the work on the validity of the OSQ is still in progress. Some attempts to evaluate the validity of the OSQ have been made by the use of analyses of variance and t tests computed to determine the extent to which each scale discriminates between various subgroups of a sample (Offer and Howard, 1972). These subgroups were determined on such variables as age, sex, American or Australian nationality, and normal or disturbed adjustment. The latter was determined by the S's admission to a psychiatric hospital or clinic. To increase the clinical usefulness of the OSQ, further studies, particularly regarding its validity, are needed. The investigation presented here was therefore designed to explore the areas of overlap between the OSQ and the MMPI. The expectation is that scales on either test which are reputed to be sensitive to similar personality traits will correlate highly. This should result in new information about the validity of either method with populations of disturbed adolescents. METHOD
Subjects Ss were 14 male and 26 female adolescents between the ages of 14and 21 (average age 16.43, SD 1.599) in a small private psychiatric hospital. The subjects were mostly white and came from urban and suburban areas and from all social classes. They were quite similar to the subjects previously used by other investigators to establish the norms for the OSQ (Offer, 1971). Instruments The instruments used were the OSQ and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. The MMPI was chosen because it provides "an objective
Offer Serf-Image Questionnaire for Adolescents and the MMPI
147
assessment of some of the major personality characteristics that affect personal and social adjustment" (Dahlstrom and Welsh, 1960, p. 3).
Procedure
Soon after the Ss were admitted to the hospital, they completed the MMPI as a part of their intake battery of tests. The OSQ was fiUed out within 2 working days after the subjects were admitted to the hospital's Young People's Unit (YPU). The Ss' test data had to meet the following criteria to be included in the study: (a) the OSQ did not have more than ten unanswered or doubly marked questions out of the 146 total questions, (b) the OSQ and MMPI were both completed within a 20-day period of each other, (c) the MMPI's ?, L and K scales (three of the four validity scales) were at or below a T score of 70, (d) the MMPI F scale (the fourth validity scale) was at or under a T score of 90, but (e) if t h e MMPI F scale was between a T s c o r e of 80 and a T s c o r e of 90 the subject had to have a score of 12 or more on the MMPI Test-Retest (Tr) scale (Coch6 and Steer, 1974). This last condition was added to insure the validity of MMPI prof'des where there was a suspicion of random answering because of a high F score.
Data Analysis
The data consisted of each S's score on all 11 scales of the OSQ and his score on 13 of the 14 basic MMPI scales. The Mf (Masculinity-Femininity) scale was not used because it is scored in opposite directions for males and females; thus combining male and female scores would be misleading. Furthermore, it did not appear useful for the purposes of this study. The correlation between subjects' OSQ and MMPI scores was calculated using the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient.
RESULTS Table I presents the correlation matrix derived. Of the 143 correlation coefficients, 39 (27%) are significant at least at the 0.05 level, with seven (5%) significant at the 0.01 level. The OSQ scales which correlate at significant levels with at least six of the MMPI scales are Emotional Tone, Mastery of External Problems, Psychopathology, and Superior Adjustment. The MMPI scales which correlate at significant levels with all four of these OSQ scales are Hs (Hypochondriasis), D (Depression), Hy (Hysteria), Pt (Psychasthenia), and Si (Social Introversion).
148
Coch~ and Taylo~
0
0
0
c~
-am, O~
0 ~.0 v
o
c5~c5c~c5c~c5c~c~c5 c~
r~
"0 ,.Q 0
~o
0 EJ
~
0
.,,_,
~vv
Offer Self-Image Questionnaire for Adolescents and the MMPI
149
DISCUSSION
The scales of the two tests correlate at significant levels much more often than would be expected by chance. Most of the significant correlations are easily understood, although there are a few exceptions. The OSQ Imptilse Control scale (scale 1) appears to be measuring the effectiveness of the adolescents' defense mechanisms. The MMPI F, D, and Pt scales correlate with the Impulse Control scale, indicating that a high score on the first OSQ scale (i.e., low impulse control) is associated with mental agitation and ruminative self-doubt connected with a depression. The Impulse Control scale does not seem to measure the tendency to act out aggressively since none of the scales of the Pd-Pa-Ma (Psychopathic Deviation, Paranoia, Mania) combination correlates with it at a significant level. The Emotional Tone scale (2) correlates significantly with the F scale and all the clinical scales except Pd and Ma. Thus the Emotional Tone scale seems to be measuring not only depression but also psychopathology in general. Scale 3, Body and Self Image, reflects the degree of self-devaluation and resulting depression; it correlates significantly with the Pt and D scales. There are a number of unexpected results concerning the Social Relationship scale (4). It correlates negatively with the ? scale at a 0.02 significance level, indicating that Ss with poor interpersonal relationships leave more items blank than others. Scale 4 does not correlate with the Pd scale, although high scorers on the Pd scale are reputed to have shallow social relationships (Carson, 1969). It also does not correlate significantly with the Si scale, which supposedly is an "index of comfort in interpersonal relationships" (Carson, 1969, p. 259). Scale 5, Morals, shows no real similarity with any of the MMPI scales, as might be expected. The Sexual Attitudes scale (6) correlates significantly only with the D scale, indicating that poor adjustment concerning sexual feelings, attitudes, and behavior may be connected with depression. The Family Relationship (7) scale does not seem to be measuring the same variables as the MMPI and does not correlate significantly with any of the MMPI scales. Scale 8, Mastery of External Problems, correlates highly with the F scale and every clinical scale except Ma. It correlates with the D, Pt, Sc, and Si scale at the 0.01 level. This OSQ scale appears to be the one which best reflects differences in the ability to adjust among disturbed adolescents. Scale 9, Vocational-Educational Goals, does not correlate significantly with any of the MMPI scales. This is to be expected considering the differences in content which the scales are covering. The Psychopathology scale (10) correlates significantly with the F scale and all of the clinical scales except Pd and Ma. Its factorial structure is apparently quite similar to that of scale 8. Factor-analytic studies of the MMPI (Welsh, 1956) have shown that these scales which covary so highly with scale 10 of the
150
Coch~ and Taylor
OSQ are heavily loaded with the first factor, generally described as anxiety or general emotional upset (factor A) and with the second factor (factor R) labeled "social dependency." Scale 11, Superior Adjustment, shows a pattern of correlations very similar to that of scales i 0 and 8. Apparently it also is mostly an indicator of general psychopathology, at least as far as the MMPI and our patient population are concerned. The fact that scale 11 does not correlate significantly with the F and Pa scales, however, seems to indicate that the Superior Adjustment scale is less sensitive than the Psychopathology scale to some severe symptoms of maladjustment. The results of this study thus seem to suggest that the OSQ primarily taps depression, anxiety, and self-devaluation as they affect emotional tone, mastery of external problems, psychopathology, and adjustment. A similar study involving normal adolescents appears desirable. A factor analysis of the OSQ scales would also be helpful to understand the present findings. The inferences which may be drawn from this study are limited by the instruments and the sample used. It should be noted that the OSQ and the MMPI have very different underlying theories. The OSQ was developed from research on the normal adolescent (Offer and Sabshin, 1963), while the MMPI was basically constructed for use in an adult population using disease entities as its categories. Hathaway and Monachesi (1963) present an extensive collection of data gathered by the administration of the MMPI to a vast sample of adolescents most of whom can be considered "normal." Considering this kind of population, they too are somewhat hesitant to use an instrument designed for adults and based on diagnostic entities. However, they give some rather practical reasons for doing so (see p. 32) and conclude that their data do not contradict the interpretations generally applied to adult prof'fles. Thus the meaning of the clinical scales seems to be approximately the same for adolescents and for adults. Another consideration is that this study was based on a population of disturbed adolescents. Data from a "normal" population might look quite different. Although the present study indicates that findings from two very different self-report instruments are internally consistent and that the data gathered by these two techniques support each other, the question remains how useful selfreport data from adolescent respondents are. Several authors have approached this question experimentally. DeCharms etal. (1955)compared information regarding the need for achievement gathered from the TAT with similar information obtained from self-reports. Both methods yielded results which were meaningful in their own right but quite different in their interpretive content. Similarly, Sherwood (1966) compared self-report and TAT data as predictors of actual behavior. In predicting achievement behavior, neither of the two methods proved superior to the other but a combination of the two was a better predictor than either approach alone. Comparing their accuracy in predicting affiliation behavior, Sherwood found more complicated differences: the TAT was a better
Offer Self-ImageQuestionnaire for Adolescents and the MMPI
151
predictor for males, the self-report better for females. However, for male students who described themselves as more revealing, the self-reported need for affiliation was indeed significantly related to their affiliative behavior. Child e t al. (1956) found questionnaires generally more reliable and more valid in predicting observable behavior than TAT stories. Other self-report techniques used successfully with adolescents include the Adjective Check List (Schaefer, 1969) and the IPAT Jr.-Sr. High School Personality Questionnaire (Lessing, 1972). Even though these findings are encouraging, a great deal of work is still needed. Particularly the influence of social desirability and of "response set" on the results obtained from self-report methods needs to be examined very carefully. This is also true for the OSQ. Furthermore, the MMPI appears to have an advantage over other self-report instruments because of its "validity scales," which give indications of faking, concealing, or random responding. Other questionnaires like the OSQ would do well to also include such safety devices. On the other hand, the use of simple true-false dichotomies on instruments like the MMPI seems to us to be a disadvantage of these methods when used with adolescents. Steiner (1956) points out the increase in accuracy obtained by allowing more choices per item, as is the case for the OSQ. Our own experience with both methods tends to confirm Steiner's view, although we have no experimental support for this. The actual administration of self-report instruments presents very few problems, as Hathaway and Monachesi also point out. Most teenagers respond favorably to a questionnaire which requires them to think about themselves. Although the adolescent may still be lacking in skills when it comes to the verbal expression of intimate needs and feelings, he is indeed frequently preoccupied with questions about his personality and identity. Thus he may welcome the opportunity to respond to such questions, especially if he feels that they are appropriate to his life situation. In this latter respect, the MMPI usually provokes more resistance from our young patients than the OSQ. The considerable length of the MMPI further contributes to greater resistance. Comparison of the two methods thus points to some advantages and shortcomings on both sides. While the OSQ appears more desirable in its appropriateness to adolescence and its underlying theory, the MMPI has the advantage of the validity scales and a great deal of past research into its statistical properties. Further studies are necessary to enhance the usefulness of the OSQ for the clinician dealing with adolescents experiencing problems in living, but the results so far are quite encouraging. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors wish to express their gratitude to Ralph C. Wiggins for his help in the statistical analysis of the data and to Evan Mason for her help in the review of the literature.
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Coeh~ and Taylor REFERENCES
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