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Value identification and psychiatric disability: An analysis involving Americans of mexican descent
Author(s) -
Fabrega Horacio,
Wallace Carole Ann
Publication year - 1968
Publication title -
behavioral science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1099-1743
pISSN - 0005-7940
DOI - 10.1002/bs.3830130503
Subject(s) - psychology , marital status , value (mathematics) , identification (biology) , traditionalism , scale (ratio) , social psychology , demography , statistics , sociology , geography , mathematics , population , philosophy , botany , cartography , humanities , biology
Abstract The demographic features and value identifications of a sample of psychiatric outpatients and a probability sample of nonpatients are compared. Both groups were Americans of Mexican descent and lived in border regions of South Texas, an area characterized by competing cultural systems and known to be undergoing social change. The nonpatient group had a significantly higher level of economic self‐sufficiency and also showed higher measures on the variables of education, occupation, and marital stability. Scalogram analysis was used to better define group differences in value identification. Answers to the items of the value questionnaire reflected either traditional (Mexican) or nontraditional (Anglo) value preferences. Analysis showed that the two groups did not differ significantly in the way they conformed to scale requirements, and that there were no significant differences between the groups in degree of traditionalistic emphasis. Comparing how the individuals of each group were distributed across the value continuum between traditionalism and nontraditionalism, however, showed that the nonpatient group had a significantly larger proportion of individuals who preferred either extreme of the continuum as compared to the patients. It is suggested that the results involving the demographic variables imply group differences in social productivity and assimilation. These differences, in turn, may relate to the implications of the distributional patterns of the groups on the value scale rather than to differences in the overall extent of identification with traditional values.