Date of Award

12-1984

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Department

Counseling and Personnel

Abstract

Process Theory is a new personality/diagnostic system designed by Dr. Taibi Kahler. It is described in detail and compared to other such systems in the psychological literature. A study was conducted to determine the system's interdiagnostician reliability, inter-measure reliability, external validity, and convergent validity with Millon's Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI). Forty subjects, 20 normal and 20 clinical, were interviewed on tape. The tapes were assessed by three expert diagnosticians. The normal subjects were given the Personality Pattern Inventory (PPI), which is the Process Theory personality test. The clinical subjects were given the MCMI. Interdiagnostician reliability was assessed among the three experts. Inter-measure reliability was measured by comparing the experts' diagnoses to the PPI results. External validity was evaluated by noting the level of functioning assigned to the normal versus clinical subjects. Convergent validity was assessed by comparing the experts' diagnoses to the MCMI results. In all cases, Cohen's Kappa statistic was used to measure agreement. Interdiagnostician reliabilities concerning agreements as to personality type, and type and phase, were not acceptable. When reliabilities among the judges included agreement that a certain personality type was present in the type-phase pair, the statistics reached acceptable levels. Likewise for reliability across measures: when agreements that a certain type was present were included, reliabilities were acceptable. External validity was clearly demonstrated. The results were significant at the 0.0005 level. Convergent validity with the MCMI was not demonstrated. Implications of this research were discussed and recommendations for future research and the use of the Process Theory were made.

Access Setting

Dissertation-Open Access

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