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Psychological tests as indicators of excessive exposure to carbon disulfide
Author(s) -
HÄNNINEN HELENA,
NURMINEN MARKKU,
TOLONEN MATTI,
MARTELIN TUIJA
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9450.1978.tb00317.x
Subject(s) - discriminant function analysis , psychology , viscose , linear discriminant analysis , psychomotor learning , psychological testing , carbon disulfide , clinical psychology , psychiatry , statistics , chemistry , cognition , mathematics , organic chemistry , polymer chemistry
Twelve psychological tests including a standardized questionnaire were administered to 20 male viscose rayon workers with long‐term exposure to carbon disulfide and to 152 nonexposed men. With the method of multiple discriminant analysis the number of tests was reduced from 12 to 5 and the number of variables from 30 to 7. The variable setting of the obtained discriminant function contained measures of different types of psychomotor performances, emotional behaviour and subjective symptoms. Sensitivity and specificity of the tests and the criteria for a detected effected were evaluated a posteriori. In general, the sensitivity of the methods was better than its specificity. Sufficient specificity could be obtained when a higher probability level for belonging to the exposed group was applied as the criterion, but even then, the application of other, reference diagnostic methods seems necessary to separate the false positive cases.