Diagnosis of clinical depression on four source trait dimensions — U. I. 19, U. I. 20, U. I. 25, and U. I. 30-from the O. A. Kit

Abstract

Describe four personality factors with preliminary indications of distinguishing depressed patients from normals, namely those indexed in the O‐A Kit as U. I. 19, U. I. 20, U. I. 25 and U. I. 30. Thirty‐one clinically depressed Ss‐22 inpatients and 9 outpatients‐were administered the O‐A (Objective‐Analytic) battery for these four and the scores compared with those of 30 demographically matched controls. From earlier research and the general psychological theory that concerned these source traits it was hypothesized that depressed Ss would deviate negatively on U. I. 19 and U. I. 25 and positively on U. I. 20 and U. I. 30. A comparison of means that used a one‐tailed t‐test showed significant differences on two of the factors, U. I. 19 and U. I. 20, at p < 0.01 level of significance, and on U. I. 25 and U. I. 30 at p < 0.05 significance level. Thus, the clinical sample showed the hypothesized directions of divergence from the control sample on all four of the factors. Later use of a discriminant function on this pattern of deviations shows a high degree of patient‐control separation (Price, Cattell, & Patrick, Note 1).