Search

This paper seeks to assess the utility of the transactional model of individual stress. According to the logic of the model, whether persons manifest stress is a multiplicative function of both situational and individual characteristics. The paper briefly discusses possible advantages of the perspective over other frames of reference. Then it describes a pilot study designed to determine whether hypotheses based on the transactional model could be supported empirically. Utilizing interview data from a small probability sample of all adults in the state of Missouri, scales were constructed by an improved method of item analysis for use as indicators of variations in stress and the situational and individual factors. Comparing stress scores by situational and individual variables produced results indicative of a multiplicative relationship and thus supportive of theories derived from the transactional perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a comparative evaluation of the Wechsler-Bellevue mental deterioration index for various adult groups. In recent articles the value of the Wechsler Mental Deterioration Index (MDI) in screening patients with brain damage from normal patients has been considered. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the MDI further as a tool for differential diagnosis; that is, to determine whether a significant loss in this index is related solely to deterioration such as is found in subjects who have had organic brain injury or damage. The MDI's for the following seven groups of subjects were compared: brain injured, applicants for vocational counseling with psychoneurotic diagnoses, and with other than psychoneurotic diagnoses, mental hygiene clinic patients diagnosed as anxiety tension state, mental hygiene and hospital patients diagnosed as schizophrenic, and two groups of normals.

The article presents information on the coefficient of profile similarity. Since the second paper on this statistical quantity was published, several psychologists have asked the author to rationalize a procedure which permits the use of all the segments, including segments of zero slope. This note attempts to do just that. Whenever zero slope segments occur in the reference or compared profiles it will be given either a positive or a negative slope. The determination of the appropriate sign is made by reference to some chance operation. The implicit assumption here is that when zero slope segments occur, a very large sample of segments taken from the same individual or group would yield equal -relative frequencies for positive and negative slopes.