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On the Accuracy of Clinical Judgements
Author(s) -
HORN JOHN L.,
STEWART PATRICIA
Publication year - 1968
Publication title -
british journal of social and clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.479
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8260
pISSN - 0007-1293
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8260.1968.tb00549.x
Subject(s) - psychoticism , neuroticism , psychology , minnesota multiphasic personality inventory , variance (accounting) , clinical psychology , dimension (graph theory) , psychiatry , extraversion and introversion , personality , social psychology , big five personality traits , mathematics , accounting , pure mathematics , business
Using only the information provided in MMPI profiles, thirteen clinical psychologists and sixteen trainees in clinical psychology attempted to assess the degree of psychoticism of 861 patients who had been admitted to a hospital or clinic and for whom a diagnosis of ‘psychotic’ or ‘neurotic’ had been made. The clinician‐judges were required to distribute their ratings over an eleven‐point forced‐normal ‘scale’. The correlations of each clinician‐judge with every other and with the diagnosis (‘psychotic vs. non‐psychotic’) were determined. All correlations were positive. Those among the twenty‐nine clinician‐judges were of the order of 0·3 to 0·9, most being between 0·6 and 0·85. Most of the correlations of clinician‐judges with the diagnosis variable were in the 0·20 to 0·35 range. The first principal component among the correlations accounted for 85 per cent of the total variance. In a rotated, three‐factor solution one factor defined the dimension underlying the criterion judgements while the other two represented consistent influences which were largely independent of the final diagnosis. The nature of these influences could not be determined from the data in hand.