Un approccio innovativo al testing psicopatologico: Taleia. parte II: attendibilità e validità del test

Studies reliability and validity of TALEIA (Test for AxiaL Evaluation and Interview for Clinical, Personnel, and Guidance Applications). Retest (N = 123, one-weak interval) shows average r = 0.83, and correlations between parallel forms (N = 139) average to r = 0.74. An ACP (N = 280) on TALEIA, 16 PF, and PNP shows a four factors structure explaining 53% of the total variance, the first factor having psychopathological content and the others showing continuity between normal personality traits and clinical or personality disorders. A sample of «certified pathological» (N = 436), «certified normals» (N = 773 males), and two samples of «non-certified normals» (N = 386 draftees and N = 156 male students asking for school guidance) were compared. The MANOVA results were significant (p < 0.001), and post-hoc analyses (HSD test corrected for different size) showed significant differences related both to clinical status (pathologicals vs. normals) and to different situations (guidance and military draft). These results seem to allow a professional use of TALEIA, if different parameters for different applications are provided

L'orientamento.

Il volume analizza interventi di orientamento che si esctendono dal livello della scuola di base fino all'università inclusa. Essi si riferiscono a un modello ben definito, caratterizzato d auna prospettiva personologica - si mette l'accento sulla personalità individuale e sull'aiuto allo sviluppo decisionale personale - e dal irgore scientifico dei controlli sperimentali compiuti, principalmente dagli autori, in quanto responsabili di strutture di orientamento accademico e scolastico, nell'arco di venti anni di attività. Gli autori ritengono desiderabile la collaborazione di più professionisti,ma presentano modelli in cui di volta in volta può aver avuto la prevalenza l'una o l'altra competenza professionale

TALEIA-400 (Test for Axial Evaluation and Interview for Clinical, Personnel, and Guidance Applications) Manuale

TALEIA-400A è un questionario di personalità composto da 18 scale cliniche, basate sui criteri nosografici di ICD-10 e DSM-IV e da tre scale di controllo, validato e standardizzato in Italia fra il 2000 e il 2007, utizzabile a partire dall'adolescenza. La validità è stata verificata su un campione di oltre 7.000 soggetti. Acquisizione dati e scoring sono informatizzati con un software dedicato

I test in psicologia. Fondamenti teorici e applicazioni.

Strumento fondamentale per lo psicologo, i test non sempre sono correttamente applicati, il che ne inficia validità e attendibilità. Questo manuale fornisce le indicazioni fondamentali per un uso efficace dei test in relazione ai diversi ambiti di intervento. Dopo aver illustrato i problemi classici della psicometria, l'autrice presenta un'ampia scelta di test attualmente disponibili in Italia, speciifcamente costruiti per pianificare interventi nei seguenti ambiti: ritardo mentale e scolastico, orientamento scolastico e professionale, selezione del personale, qualità della vita, psicodiagnosi. Di ciascun test sono descritte le modalità di somministrazione, l'attribuzione dei punteggi, l'interpretazione dei risultati

I test in psicologia. Esercitazioni pratiche

Le esercitazioni pratiche proposte in questo volume iintroducono il lettore all'uso efficace dei test in psicologia: a partire da una serie di esercizi tratti dalla vita reale e di casi di studio vengono così chiarite le modalità di somministrazione, l'attribuzione dei punteggi, l'interpretazione dei risultai

Guida per la correzione dei temi

Il volume offre una guida per la valutazione di saggi in lingua materna scritti da studenti italiani, individuando vari criteri di valutazione, in parte linguistici ed in parte descrittivi dello sviluppo cognitivo. Gli studi raccolti nel testo documentano la validità edumetrica del metodo attraverso l'analisi delle componenti principali e mediante confronti fra produzioni di studenti di madrelingua italiana e albanese, per i quali l'italiano è la seconda lingua. Vengono anche riportati dati paradigmatici calcolati su campioni diversamente caratterizzati

Guidance in the Schools: A new device for teachers and psychologists.

The paper gives a preliminary account about a set of tools meant for guidance interventions in the schools (level: 14 years old). The main features are a questionnaire to be used individually or collectively; a software which converts into an alpha-numeric text file the answers that a scanner captures as images; and a software which imports the questionnaire answers, does all the routine scoring and psychometric work required and produces a report for each child and a report for the teacher or the psychologist in charge of a group of children giving a sketch of what is more urgent to be done with differente subgroups of children; a workbook to be used individually or for group training practice. Separate reports for the children and the operators help to give separate and non-competitive roles to psychologists and teachers. The paper is mainly concerned with the “diagnostic” components of the interventions, giving details about the questionnaire (“Focus 11+”) and the companion software. Results obtained in two schools encourage to make a larger use of the instruments, which already seem to have reasonable reliability standards

Un approccio innovativo al testing psicopatologico: Taleia parte I: Validità di contenuto e scale di controllo

Studies content validity of TALEI A (Test for AxiaL Evaluation and Interview for Clinical, Personnel, and Guidance Applications), focusing on construction methods. Evidence is given for expert agreement about relevance to nosographies (DSM -IV & ICD-10), psychometric grounds underlying the validity scales, independence from linguistic competence and verbal intelligence. Nosographic categories were reduced to the ones of above average importance in the experts’ (N = 29) assessment. Diagnostic indicators were evaluated by a different panel (N = 27) mostly as «useful» (93%) or «seldom useful» (5%), agreement varying between 100% and 79%. Correlations with intelligence test showed significant only for ten items, therefore excluded from the data bank. The test readability was verified in a quasi-clinical setting (national sample of small groups, N = 410), and on a large national sample (N = 4070) of draftees. The few words «linguistically difficult» in two or more samples were substituted. In the large sample less than 1% of Ss. omitted or not clearly answered one or more items. TALEI A appears as a potentially sound instrument to be further investigated

Community-dwelling adults versus older adults: testing the continuum hypothesis of psychopathology

Little empirical evidence is available on older adults regarding the existence of a continuum between "normal" personality traits and DSM-IV-TR Axes I and II disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Given the typical complexity of clinical presentations in advanced age, it is feasible to expect a dimensional conceptualization of psychopathology to apply to older adults. In this pilot investigation, we first tested age differences in psychopathology, upholding the view that older adults should be considered separately from younger individuals in research on psychopathology. Then, in support of the dimensional approach, we tested the hypothesized continuity between normality and psychopathology by verifying the fulfillment of two operational criteria of continuity. A non-clinical sample of 100 Italian respondents was divided into two groups (50 people per group, 25 women and 25 men), aged 25-64 and 65-84, respectively. The instruments used were a measure of normal personality, SFERAS (Boncori & Barruffi, 2004) and one of Axes I and II psychopathology, TALEIA-400A (Boncori, 2007). MANOVA analyses demonstrated a significant effect on both measures, with older adults achieving higher Axis I scores and higher scores on normal personality traits connected to anxiety. The continuum hypothesis was confirmed on older and younger adults through correlational analyses that verified the fulfillment of both continuity criteria. Our results show that Italian older adults differ significantly in psychopathology from younger individuals; however, contrary to findings from other countries, in a negative direction. The continuity results (although in need of replication with larger samples, utilizing statistical methods better suited for these analyses, such as taxometric procedures) offer preliminary support for the notion that the dimensional approach to psychopathology could work well in older age

Comorbilità psicopatologiche e qualità della vita in un campione di pazienti psichiatrici

Introduction. Psychopathological comorbidity in psychiatric patients is a common issue of epidemiological studies. Still, co-diagnoses have been suspected of being an artefact of a defective nosography rather than a realistic representation of multiple disorders co-existing in the same patient. This research aims at studying multiple disorders related to Axis I andAxis II of the DSM-IV in patients suffering from multiple, acute, and recurring psychotic episodes. Further, we aim to explore correlations between multiplicity of disorders and quality of life. Materials and methods. The experimental sample includes 30 patients having principal diagnoses belonging to the Axis I, regarded as major psychoses, and the control sample includes 39 volunteers, without any present or previous psychotic disorder.As to measuring instruments, two questionnaires have been used: the MOS (Medical Outcomes Study Short Form Health Survey, by Stein et al.) and TALEIA-400A (Test for AxiaL Evaluation and Interview for clinical, personnel, and guidance Applications, by L. Boncori et al.).A multiple analysis of variance has been calculated to verify differences in number of disorders between experimental and control groups, and bivariate correlations to verify negative relationship between co-diagnoses and quality of life. Results. The patients’ group showed significantly more disorders than the control group (p=0.0007); subgroups of patients different in number and quality of co-diagnosis also significantly differed as to overall profile elevation and as to cognitive efficiency; the correlation between co-diagnoses and quality of life is significant and negative (r=-0,62, p<0.01). Conclusions. Our data fit to outcomes from other studies showing that comorbidities can be regarded as an index of disorder severity