The Defense Style Questionnaire: A Psychometric Examination
Contenu
Titre
The Defense Style Questionnaire: A Psychometric Examination
Journal of Personality Disorders
Créateur
Philip Spinhoven
Hendrikus A.E. van Gaalen
Robbert E. Abraham
Résumé
The aim of the study was to assess the psychometric properties of the shortened 36-item Defense Style Questionnaire (DSQ) administered as a separate instrument. The DSQ, the Symptom Checklist-90, and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire were presented to three groups: a normal population (n = 234), and psychiatric patients with (n = 545) and psychiatric patients without a DSM-III-R diagnosis (n = 115). A three-factor solution was found (immature, neurotic and mature defenses). Defense styles could be ranked in the order immature, neurotic, and mature on the basis of their intercorrelations and the correlations of defense factor scores with measurements of current symptoms and neuroticism. Moreover, the three defense factors differentiated between psychiatric subgroups and normal controls. However, none of the item response distributions was normal, the amount of variance explained by principal components analysis was relatively small, and the reliability of the factor scales was insufficient. Moreover, differences in defensive behavior between groups disappeared after statistically controlling for level of current symptoms or neuroticism. Some problems related to a multifactor inventory for defensive behavior are discussed and suggestions for improvement and future research are given.
volume
9
numéro
2
pages
124-133
Date
June 1, 1995
Titre abrégé
Journal of Personality Disorders
The Defense Style Questionnaire
doi
10.1521/pedi.1995.9.2.124
issn
0885-579X