engleski

An empirical look at The Defense Style Questionnaire - 40: Reliability and Construct Validity

Defense mechanisms, together with coping strategies, are used to describe people’ s responses to stressful situations. They are part of normal development, serving the dual function of protecting the person from excessive anxiety and maintaining self esteem. According to the Vaillant’ s hierarchical model the ego defenses can be arranged on a continuum of the adjustment, with the mature defenses contributing to the successful and joyful life, and immature defenses predicting different psychopathology symptoms and disorders. Among the instruments available today for evaluating defense mechanisms, one of the most interesting is DSQ and its numerous versions. The aim of this study is to evaluate the validity of the DSQ-40 in Croatian sample and to examine the gender differences and associations between the defensive styles and some personality and psychopathology symptom patterns. The research was carried out on a sample of 300 Croatian university students. Three self-report measures were administered: Defense Style Questionnaire (DSQ-40), Freiburg Personality Inventory (FPI) and Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI). The Defense Style Questionnaire DSQ-40 (Andrews et al 1993) measure three clusters: mature, neurotic and immature style. With the permission of the author, the scale was translated into Croatian. Three experts, psychiatrists with the psychoanalytical training performed the content validity. Factor structure of defenses in Croatian sample is compared with original clusters. Internal reliability is evaluated as well. Data were analyzed according to gender differences. The associations between the defensive styles and personality dimensions and psychopathology symptom patterns are analyzed. The results provide evidence for the conclusion that emotional instability and immature defenses (especially autistic fantasy and projection) were the major predictors of the BSI psychiatric symptoms. On the other hand, it appeared that both, emotional stability and mature defenses are strongly correlated with perceived life satisfaction, social orientation, openness, extraversion, and emotional stability. Results in this study indicated that emotional stability and mature defenses appeared to protect the person from psychopathology.

defense mechanisms; DSQ-40

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