The relationship between severity of menstrual distress, measured by the Moos Menstrual Distress Questionnaire, and sex-role attributes, measured by the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, was examined for a group of 103 undergraduate women. Data were compared for women using and not using oral contraceptives and for women from different religious groups. Because trait anxiety, as measured by a 28-item short form adapted from the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, was significantly correlated with menstrual distress, first-order correlations between distress and sex-role attributes partialled out anxiety scores. Although none of the sex-role attributes was significantly related to distress for the entire group or for the group of women using the pill, a significant positive relationship between masculinity and menstrual distress was noted for the group of women not using the pill. The pattern of results suggested that although sex role attributes and anxiety are related to reports of menstrual distress for Catholic women, only anxiety is associated with distress for Jewish women, and neither sex-role attributes nor anxiety is correlated with distress for Protestant women.According to psychoanalytic theory, menstrual problems are intimately related to the way in which a woman defines herself vis-a-vis the traditional feminine role. Women who attempt to reject their femininity are said to somaticize this conflict and, as a result, develop menstrual complications (Abraham, 1948;Balint, 1937; Benedek, 1959;Menninger, 1939). In contrast, Paige (1973) has suggested that it is the more feminine woman w h o experiences greater distress at or around the time ot menstruation. She examined three aspects of conventional femi-
American society is eager to embrace brief therapy as one answer to skyrocketing bills and the limited supply of mental health care providers. In the new healing philosophy of "Reagapeutics," brief therapy symbolizes our increasing sense of futurelessness in the nuclear era, our impatience in this age of haste, and our intolerance for dependency.
The forced choice Rotter I-E scale and a scale that involved rating percentage agreement with the separate item alternatives both were completed by 294 undergraduates. Disagreement between the two scale formats was greater when pairs of alternatives were seen as more equal. Disagreement also was related to self-rated level of conflict when Ss were responding to the forced choice item. Correlations between responses to pairs of separate item alternatives were low, which replicates previous studies. However, correlation between the forced choice I-E score and an I-E score derived from ratings of the separate alternatives w&s high, a replication of other previous work. These results were integrated by showing support for a model of locus of control as comprised of independent external and internal subscales, in which forced choice I-E represents a balance score.The forced choice format of the Rotter I-E Scale has been identified as a source of phenomenological conflict (Sanger & Alker, 1972), as a safeguard against response bias (Rotter, 1966), as an approximation of the type of decisions required by the real world (Tyler, Gatz & Keenan, Note l), and as a potential source of inconsistent factor analytic results (Kleiber, Veldman, & Nenaker, 1973).Studies that assessed the forced-choice format (Collins, 1974;Kleiber et al., 1973;Klockars & Varnum, 1975) have yielded some comparable and some dissimilar results. Iileiber et al. (1973) and Klockars and Varnum (1975) questioned whether pairs of alternatives are bipolar. They reasoned that if a pair of internal and external statements from a given item are opposites, then (a) they should be significantly negatively correlated; and (b) both should load on the same factor, with opposite signs. Neither conclusion was supported. Rather, their results suggested that on the majority of items the respondent is choosing between different subscales as well as between internal and external attributions of control. The average item pair correlation reported by , and the range was +.14 to -.47. Item-by-item correlations reported by Klockers and Varnum were very similar. Their average was -.15; their range was +.06 to -.46, and the same two items represented the ends of the range.Collins (1974) also factored the 46 separate statements and found that the alternatives tended to load on different factors. He took the further step of testing whether answers to the 46-item Likert format approximated scores obtained from the 23-item forced choice format. If so, then factor analysis results could be generalized to the forced-choice I-E scale. He scored both formats for externality and found a correlation of .82 between them, which suggests that the two were measuring the same construct.The present study was designed to replicate, resolve, and extend these previous studies, as well as to explore the implications of the results for use of the I-E scale. METHOD Subjects and ProcedureThe Rotter I-E scale was presented in two different formats to 294 students (75 male, 219 female; 260 white, 34 ...
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