Normal functioning: Its component aspects. A national survey of psychologists' views.

摘要

This study is concerned with the need to acknowledge and delineate concepts of normal functioning to balance delineation of abnormal and pathological functioning within mental health fields. Few such efforts exist in the literature. Those few have not related to normality, but to concepts such as mental health, maturity, competence, and adaptation.; The Comprehensive Inventory of Values Regarding Normality (CI) was developed to describe component characteristics of normal adult functioning. Its 113 items and 15 theoretical subscales (indices) were distilled from a broader survey of the literature in psychology and psychiatry than that of prior related efforts. Only in the CI do all items derive directly from and appear in the same proportion to that in the literature. Face validity of the CI is high for the description of component characteristics of adult normality. Internal consistency analysis reliabilities of CI indices ranged from.73 to.91 (with most between.80 and.90).; The CI and a set of demographic questions were mailed to 600 Ph.D. psychologist members of APA Division 29 (psychotherapy). As this was an exploratory study, descriptive statistics such as mean item score, standard deviation, frequency distribution, correlation, and factor analysis were used in analysis of data received from 200 respondents.; Respondents indicated all CI items as moderately to highly salient for the description of adult normality. They agreed on qualities most highly descriptive of adult normality, qualities less descriptive, and the way in which these qualities were ordered. Most highly salient qualities were autonomous focus and assumption of responsibility. Least salient were religious and spiritual functioning. Factor analysis did not statistically support the CI's 15 theoretical indices, but produced one large factor; reflecting the fact that respondents endorsed the entire CI, rather than differentiating by subscale. Failure of factor analysis also was a reflection of low respondent to item ratio, homogeneity of the sample, and high item and index intercorrelation (p {dollar}<{dollar}.001).; The demographic variables employment setting, age, helpfulness of personal psychotherapy, and theoretical orientation significantly affected response across the entire CI. Other variables produced much weaker effects across fewer indices or no effects.; Study results, their implications, limitations of the study, and recommendations for future applications and research are discussed in the final sections of this paper.