On the value of homogeneous constructs for construct validation, theory testing, and the description of psychopathology.
paper
Cited
Public
- Authors
- Smith, Gregory T; McCarthy, Denis M; Zapolski, Tamika C B
- Year
- 2009
- Journal
- Psychological assessment
- PMID
- 19719340
- DOI
- 10.1037/a0016699
- PMCID
- PMC2854033
The authors argue for a significant shift in how clinical psychology researchers conduct construct validation and theory validation tests. They argue that sound theory and validation tests can best be conducted on measures of unidimensional or homogeneous constructs. Hierarchical organizations of such constructs are useful descriptively and theoretically, but higher order composites do not refer to definable psychological processes. Application of this perspective to the approach of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to describing psychopathology calls into doubt the traditional use of the syndromal approach, in which single scores reflect the presence of multidimensional disorders. For many forms of psychological dysfunction, this approach does not appear optimal and may need to be discarded. The authors note that their perspective represents a straightforward application of existing psychometric theory, they demonstrate the practical value of adopting this perspective, and they provide evidence that this shift is already under way among clinical researchers. Description in terms of homogeneous dimensions provides improved validity, utility, and parsimony. In contrast, the use of composite diagnoses can retard scientific progress and hamper clinicians' efforts to understand and treat dysfunction.
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| 60 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — The Disaggregation of Mental Disorders — Depression | Perhaps, then, it is the case that depression is not a coherent, homogeneous psychological… |
| 61 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — The Disaggregation of Mental Disorders — Obsessive-compulsive disorder | Many authors have separated obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) into several dimensions. Watson and… |
| 62 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — The Disaggregation of Mental Disorders — Posttraumatic stress disorder | Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is thought to be a distress-based disorder in hierarchical… |
| 63 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — The Disaggregation of Mental Disorders — Schizotypal personality disorder | The apparent heterogeneity of some disorders according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of… |
| 64 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — The Disaggregation of Mental Disorders — Schizotypal personality disorder | It follows from these examples of heterogeneity that, for many disorders, the use of diagnostic… |
| 65 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — The Disaggregation of Mental Disorders — Schizotypal personality disorder | Perhaps more problematically, in such a situation one has to assume that the symptom count score… |
| 66 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — The Disaggregation of Mental Disorders — Schizotypal personality disorder | Of course, it may be true that some of these disorders represent true syndromes, in that some of the… |
| 67 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — The Disaggregation of Mental Disorders — Schizotypal personality disorder | An additional advantage of a focus on homogeneous dimensions of dysfunction is this: Just as some… |
| 68 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — The Disaggregation of Mental Disorders — Schizotypal personality disorder | Having described this problem, we want to emphasize that we are not promoting the view that the DSM… |
| 69 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — On the Comprehensiveness, Utility, and Parsimony of Using Homogeneous Constructs to Describe Psychopathology | We have presented an argument for describing psychopathology in terms of homogeneous dimensions of… |
| 70 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — On the Comprehensiveness, Utility, and Parsimony of Using Homogeneous Constructs to Describe Psychopathology — The comprehensive coverage of psychopathology with description in terms of homogeneous dimensions of dysfunction | Clinicians may feel that, in some cases, recognition of the existence of a syndrome is crucial to… |
| 71 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — On the Comprehensiveness, Utility, and Parsimony of Using Homogeneous Constructs to Describe Psychopathology — The comprehensive coverage of psychopathology with description in terms of homogeneous dimensions of dysfunction | To address this possibility, one must consider what an alternative client description, based on… |
| 72 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — On the Comprehensiveness, Utility, and Parsimony of Using Homogeneous Constructs to Describe Psychopathology — The comprehensive coverage of psychopathology with description in terms of homogeneous dimensions of dysfunction | That personality description shows that clinicians did not appear to miss the essential elements of… |
| 73 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — On the Comprehensiveness, Utility, and Parsimony of Using Homogeneous Constructs to Describe Psychopathology — The comprehensive coverage of psychopathology with description in terms of homogeneous dimensions of dysfunction | Similar developments have occurred in the study of emotional disorders, as described in this special… |
| 74 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — On the Comprehensiveness, Utility, and Parsimony of Using Homogeneous Constructs to Describe Psychopathology — The utility of disaggregation in psychopathology description | Samuel and Widiger (2006) reported evidence that clinicians found the FFM descriptions of… |
| 75 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — On the Comprehensiveness, Utility, and Parsimony of Using Homogeneous Constructs to Describe Psychopathology — The utility of disaggregation in psychopathology description | Another aspect of utility is the time taken to conduct a diagnostic assessment. Widiger and Lowe… |
| 76 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — On the Comprehensiveness, Utility, and Parsimony of Using Homogeneous Constructs to Describe Psychopathology — The utility of disaggregation in psychopathology description | In addition, it does not appear to be the case that a shift to our proposed form of description… |
| 77 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — On the Comprehensiveness, Utility, and Parsimony of Using Homogeneous Constructs to Describe Psychopathology — The utility of disaggregation in psychopathology description | There are, of course, practical difficulties associated with a shift from the syndromal model to one… |
| 78 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — On the Comprehensiveness, Utility, and Parsimony of Using Homogeneous Constructs to Describe Psychopathology — The parsimony of disaggregation in psychopathology description | We believe that a focus on homogeneous dimensions of dysfunction would, in fact, provide improved… |
| 79 | Psychopathology Description and Diagnosis — On the Comprehensiveness, Utility, and Parsimony of Using Homogeneous Constructs to Describe Psychopathology — The parsimony of disaggregation in psychopathology description | To summarize this second section of the article, we maintain that when construct validation and… |
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