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In Reply to: The control factor posted by Kinda Gentler on August 16, 2004 at 11:56:21:
The study on personality cited above tried to get at the issue of the PR self versus the object self through measurement of the social desirability construct and found nothing significant there. I'm thinking there are other constructs--such as "splitting"--that may prove to be a more sensitive measure.
I don't know that much about personality tests--not my thing, really, and I haven't been trained in the finer points of this sort of testing and instrumentation.
My specialization is in measurement of neurological indicators associated with brain disease. I know a lot about measurment of internal mood states (anxiety & depression), behavioral problems (impulse control & attention span), perception (reality testing) & cognitive processes (thought insertions, thinking errors). Also, assessment of learning disabilities: not exactly my expert area, but closer to it than personality tests.
I have a bias against psychological testing because I think people have the right to be wierd & eccentric as long as they aren't criminal or self-destructive. It would appear that the average Family Home in the US and Canada isn't producing significantly more criminal or self-destructive personalities than the general population, despite the criminal & self-destructive characteristics of Family leadership. This is the main reason I think it's important that Family samples in studies such as this include kids raised in WS homes, because I hypothesize that the leadership environments are more likely to produce psychopathic offspring than the homes of the rank-and-file.
When it comes to social psychology, what I know a lot about is attitude measurement. The study on personality cited above also looked at religious attitudes, which is not something I'm very interested in as a research topic. I'm much more interested in measurement on gender role conformity/nonconformity, sexual attitudes & behavior, perceptions of sexual activity, etc.
There is a dissertation out there on the subject of sexual behavior/attitudes among Family youth, btw. I haven't seen any articles published on that dissertation as yet, but one of the more favorable findings from this study was cited in the Chancellor book. (Family kids in the sample did not report sexual activity with any greater or less frequency than a comparison sample.)
What you're really asking about regarding high control groups is the extent to which certain measures have been normed and can therefore be deemed culturally sensitive & appropriate. Very few of the standard measures that I know anything about have been normed, and most that have been normed were done on ethnic/racial groups like African Americans or Asians.
All of this instrument development and norming is really expensive to do. I work for a government agency that serves the taxpayers, not for the academy where I might have more latitude researching arcane & obscure topics. If my agency was situated in Utah, there might be more interest in the impact of religiosity & high group control on mental health. On the other hand, studying the impact of urban poverty or the impact of domestic & community violence on mental health have an extremely high research priority in my state, and therefore, what I know the most about how to measure.
