Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T14:02:39.008Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Response set and observer set in the assessment of depressed patients1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

E. S. Paykel
Affiliation:
From St. George's Hospital, London
B. A. Prusoff
Affiliation:
Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A.

Synopsis

Depressed patients were rated at a psychiatric interview and completed a self-report symptom inventory. Concordance between the two measures was modest. Patients with psychotic depression and those with obsessional personalities were found to rate themselves low on self-report relative to interview assessments. Younger patients, and those showing neuroticism, hysterical, and oral dependent personalities rated themselves as more severely ill than did the clinician. These systematic discrepancies appeared to reflect a self-report response set to exaggerate or minimize psychiatric symptoms together with rater set regarding certain types of patients.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

American Psychiatric Association (1952). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual: Mental Disorders. American Psychiatric Association: Washington.Google Scholar
Berg, I. A. (Ed.) (1967). Response Set in Personality Assessment. Aldine: Chicago.Google Scholar
Couch, A., and Keniston, K.(1960). Yeasayers and naysayers: agreeing response set as a personality variable. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 60, 141174.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dohrenwend, B. P. (1966). Social status and psychological disorder: an issue of substance and an issue of method. American Sociological Review, 31, 1434.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, A. L. (1959). Social desirability and personality test construction. In Objective Approaches to Personality Assessment, pp. 100116. Edited by Bass, B. M. and Berg, I. A.. Van Nostrand: Princeton, N.J.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eysenck, H. J. (1959). The Manual of The Maudsley Personality Inventory. University of London Press: London.Google Scholar
Hamilton, M. (1960). A rating scale for depression. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, 23, 5662.Google ScholarPubMed
Kendell, R. E., and DiScipio, W. J. (1968). Eysenck personality inventory scores of patients with depressive illnesses. British Journal of Psychiatry, 114, 767770.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lazare, A., and Klerman, G. L. (1968). Hysteria and depression: the frequency and significance of hysterical personality features in hospitalized depressed women. American Journal of Psychiatry, 124, No. 11 Suppl. 4856.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lazare, A., Klerman, G. L., and Armor, D. J. (1966). Oral, obsessive, and hysterical personality patterns. Archives of General Psychiatry, 14, 624630.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
May, P. R. A., and Tuma, A. H. (1964). Choice of criteria for the assessment of treatment outcome. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 2, 199209.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Park, L. C., Uhlenhuth, E. H., Lipman, R. S., Rickels, K., and Fisher, S. (1965). A comparison of doctor and patient improvement ratings in a drug (meprobamate) trial. British Journal of Psychiatry, 111, 535540.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paykel, E. S. (1971). Classification of depressed patients: a cluster analysis derived grouping. British Journal of Psychiatry, 118, 275288.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paykel, E. S., Klerman, G. L., and Prusorff, B. A. (1970). Treatment setting and clinical depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 22, 1121.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Phillips, D. L., and Clancy, K. J. (1970). Response biases in field studies of mental illness. American Sociological Review, 35, 503515.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Prusoff, B. A., Klerman, G. L., and Paykel, E. S. (1972). Concordance between clinical assessments and patient's self-report in depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 26, 546552.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Raskin, A., Schulterbrandt, J. G.Reatig, N., and McKeon, J. J. (1969). Replication of factors of psychopathology in interview, ward behavior, and self-report ratings of hospitalized depressives. Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 148, 8798.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Raskin, A., Schulterbrandt, J. G., Boothe, H., Reatig, N., and McKeon, J. J. (1972). Some suggestions for selecting appropriate depression subgroups for biochemical studies, In Recent Advances in the Psychobiology of the Depressive Illnesses, pp. 315350. U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Snaith, R. P., Ahmed, S. N., Mehta, S., and Hamilton, M. (1971). Assessment of the severity of primary depressive illness. Wakefield self-assessment depression inventory. Psychological Medicine, 1, 143149.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zuckerman, M. (1969). Response set in a check list test: a sometimes thing. Psychological Reports, 25, 773774.CrossRefGoogle Scholar