Correspondence of Psychiatric Patient and Informant Ratings of Personality Traits, Temperament, and Interpersonal Problems

• Published in: Psychological assessment 2002-03, Vol.14 (1), p.39-49
• Main Authors: Ready, Rebecca E, Clark, Lee Anna
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Biological and medical sciences; Correspondence as Topic; Female; Human; Humans; Informants; Interpersonal Interaction; Interpersonal Relations; Male; Medical sciences; Mental Disorders - psychology; Personality; Personality Assessment; Personality Measures; Personality Traits; Psychiatric Patients; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychometrics. Diagnostic aid systems; Psychopathology; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Self-Assessment; Self-Report; Surveys and Questionnaires; Techniques and methods; Temperament - physiology
• ISSN: 1040-3590; 1939-134X
• DOI: 10.1037/1040-3590.14.1.39

Psychological assessment of psychiatric patients frequently relies on self-report, yet descriptions from patients often are regarded as suspect. Investigation of agreement between reports from patients versus knowledgeable informants is critical to assessing the validity of self-ratings. Self- and informant reports of temperament, personality traits, and interpersonal problems were collected from an adult, nonpsychotic psychiatric sample ( N = 90). The majority of patients had depressive diagnoses (62%), were female (81%), and were Caucasian (98%). Few mean-level differences between self- and informant reports were found. Self-informant agreement correlations were comparable in magnitude and variability to findings from nonclinical samples. Results suggest that the overall effect of psychopathology on self-ratings of personality traits, temperament, and interpersonal problems was minimal in the authors' patient sample. This conclusion runs counter to the intuitively appealing notion that psychopathology has a detrimental effect on self-awareness.