The Q-Sort Method in Personality Assessment and ...

1 The Q-Sort Method in Personality Assessment and Psychiatric Research Jack Block, Department of Psychology University of California Berkeley, California Charles C Thomas Publisher Springfield Illinois USA. AMERICAN LECTURE SERIES(c). A Monograph in The BANNERSTONE DIVISION of AMERICAN LECTURES IN PSYCHOLOGY. Edited by MOLLY HARROWER, Professor of Research in Clinical Psychology Department of Psychiatry Temple University School of Medicine Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Block Q-Sort Method CHARLES C THOMAS PUBLISHER.

2 Bannerstone House 301-327 East Lawrence Avenue, Springfield, Illinois, This book is protected by copyright. Into part of it may be reproduced in any manner with-out written permission from the publisher. 1961, by CHARLES C THOMAS PUBLISHER. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 61-10370. With THOMAS BOOKS careful attention is given to all details of manufacturing and design. It is the Publisher's desire to present books that are satisfactory as to their physical qualities and artistic possibilities and appropriate- for their particular use.

3 THOMAS. Books will be true to those laws of quality that assure a good name and good will. A philosopher must be very honest to avail himself of no aid from. poetry or rhetoric . SCHOPENHAUER. Printed in the United States of America 2. Block Q-Sort Method ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. The reader of this monograph will recognize, rather soon and then repeatedly, that its contents have been influenced in fundamental ways by the work of William Stephenson, the splendid protagonist of Q-technique. This is an inevitable indebtedness for all matters of Q-methodology have been touched by Stephenson's writings.

4 I would like to respect- fully acknowledge here the decisive impact Stephenson has had upon my own thinking. Any work, and this one perhaps more than most, has untraceable links to colleagues and to friends. In various places in the text, I have tried to record my gratitude to indi- viduals who have helped this effort along its way. Because so many persons have been involved at one time or another, I doubtless have failed to remember a number of names which properly should have been included. For this I am sorry.

5 I have better memory for the help I have received most recently. An earlier version of the present manuscript was read critically by a number of people and the present revision is, I believe, much the better for having run this friendly gauntlet. Various elliptical, tan- gential, and circular arguments have been excised or brought closer to earth and I have been enabled to correct certain errors before the embarrassment of seeing them in print. I. have not accepted all of the suggestions these readers have offered for on certain partisan issues, I have chosen to express my own standpoint.

6 I have been made aware, however, and I trust the manuscript now reflects this recognition, of the diversity of viewpoints that may be justified in regard to the issues treated here. Of course, for such errors as still remain, I alone am responsible. For their incisive and yet not ego-wounding help, I am much indebted to Jeanne H. Block, Lee J. Cronbach, Harrison G. Gough, Robert E. Har- ris, Robert R. Holt, Jean Walker Macfarlane, Norman Livson and Paul H. Mussen. This work was supported in part by research grant M-1078 from The National Institute of Mental Health, of the National Institutes of Health, Public Health Service.

7 The aid af- forded by this grant along with the congenial surroundings of the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research under its director, Donald W. MacKinnon, helped immensely in seeing this book through. I should like, too, to record my debt to Anne Lipow and to Charlotte Mendez who have made fit for a reader a manuscript messy and patched be- yond belief. In her other, non-professional role, I am grateful, deeply, to my wife, Jeanne, for her faith and her encouragement during this enterprise. She defended me from the children for the hours I required and supported me during my vacuums of unproductivity.

8 JACK BLOCK. 3. Block Q-Sort Method CONTENTS. Chapter I. An Introduction to the Q-Sort Method of Personality Description 5. II. A Perspective on Observer-Evaluations of Personality 24. III. Stephenson's Orientations Toward Q-set Construction 39. IV. Constructing the California Q-set 42. V. Evaluation of the CQ-items 49. VI. The Methodology of Q-sorting 56. VII. Research Applications of the CQ-set 69. VIII. Concluding Remarks 88. References 94. Footnotes 101. In order to reduce file size, the following Appendices are omitted A.

9 The California Q-set (Form III) - B. Instructions for Using the California Q-set - C. A Comparison of the Results Provided by Different Q-sets - D. A CQ-set Description of the Optimally Adjusted Personality , as Viewed by Clinical Psychologists - E. A CQ-set Description of the Male Paranoid, as Viewed by Clinical Psychologists - F. A CQ-set Description of the Female Hysteric, as Viewed by Clinical Psychologists - G. Table for Converting Sum d -, into r - H. An Adjective Q-set for Use by Non-Professional Sorters (Form III) - Index - 4.

10 Block Q-Sort Method Chapter I. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE Q-Sort Method OF Personality DE- SCRIPTION. In this monograph a language instrument is presented which aims to permit the com- prehensive description, in contemporary psychodynamic terms, of an individual's person- ality in a form suitable for quantitative comparison and analysis. The language instru- ment consists simply of a set of Personality variables-the California Q-set-together with instructions for ordering these variables so as to describe a designated person.