A Note on the Congruent Validity of Caine's Self Description Questionnaire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2018
Foulds (1961) has drawn what appears to be a useful distinction between personality traits and neurotic and psychotic symptoms and signs. This distinction is helpful both in diagnosis and in the assessment of treatment. Within the framework of this personality-trait and symptom-sign differentiation, Caine and Hawkins (1963) introduced a measure of what they describe as the hysteroid-obsessoid dimension of personality; and reasons in defence of this admittedly rather ugly terminology have been stated recently by Caine and Hope (1964). The self assessment hysteroid-obsessoid questionnaire (HOQ) was developed as a refinement of the hysteroid-obsessoid rating scale previously devised by Foulds and Caine (1958), which they had not found to be adequate in differentiating between groups of obsessoid and groups of hysteroid persons. The questions in the HOQ are framed in simple language and require only a true-false response. Caine and Hawkins have reported the results they obtained from administering this questionnaire to neurotic in-patients, some of whom also completed the Maudsley Personality Inventory (MPI), albeit at different stages of treatment. Although the MPI has been used extensively with samples drawn from non-psychiatric populations, both in the United States and the United Kingdom, Caine's questionnaire, a relatively new instrument, has not been as widely tested.
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