Date of Award

7-7-2014

Document Type

Undergraduate Capstone Project

Degree Name

Psy.D.

Organizational Unit

Graduate School of Professional Psychology

First Advisor

Hale Martin

Second Advisor

Courtney Welton-Mitchell

Third Advisor

Michele J. Forstot Nadel

Keywords

Rorschach Test, Aggressiveness, Children

Abstract

The Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS) was developed in 2011 as analternative to the previous Comprehensive System. The goal was to improve the psychometrics,and particularly the validity, of this assessment method. The norms for children werequestionable in the Comprehensive system (e.g., outdated, low numbers of subjects) and validitystudies for children were sparse. One of the indicators included in the R-PAS system, theaggressive content indicator (AgC), is intended to reflect aggressive behavior, but few studieshave examined the validity of this indicator. This study examined the validity of AgC in asample of 32 children and adolescents receiving services at a residential treatment center.Subjects' AgC scores were analyzed in relation to demographics and diagnosis, as well as ratingsof aggression and conduct problems from the Behavioral Assessment System for Children-2(BASC-2) Parent and Teacher Reports. Correlations between the AgC score and BASC-2aggression and conduct problems scores were not statistically significant. None of thecorrelations between AgC score and a diagnosis of Conduct Disorder, Oppositional DefiantDisorder, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, or Mood Disorders were significant either. Given thesmall sample size, null results may be a result of power concerns. The lack of significantcorrelations may however, indicate that operational definitions of aggression used in variousforms of measurement reflect different constructs.

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Extent

32 pages

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