title: Correspondence of psychiatric patient and informant ratings of personality traits, temperament, and interpersonal problems.
abstract: Psychological assessment of psychiatric patients frequently relies on self-report, yet descriptions from patients often are regarded as suspect. Investigation of agreement between reports from patients versus knowledgeable informants is critical to assessing the validity of self-ratings. Self- and informant reports of temperament, personality traits, and interpersonal problems were collected from an adult, nonpsychotic psychiatric sample (N = 90). The majority of patients had depressive diagnoses (62%), were female (81%), and were Caucasian (98%). Few mean-level differences between self- and informant reports were found. Self-informant agreement correlations were comparable in magnitude and variability to findings from nonclinical samples. Results suggest that the overall effect of psychopathology on self-ratings of personality traits, temperament, and interpersonal problems was minimal in the authors' patient sample. This conclusion runs counter to the intuitively appealing notion that psychopathology has a detrimental effect on self-awareness.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, USA. Rebecca_Ready@brown.edu
authors.forename: Rebecca E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Ready
authors.forename: Lee Anna
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Clark
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D015709:Correspondence as Topic; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D010552:Personality Assessment; D012647:Self-Assessment; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013694:Temperament / Q000502:physiology*