State anxiety and abortion

An empirical look at the Defense Mechanism Test (DMT): reliability and construct validity

Although the Defense Mechanism Test (DMT) has been in use for almost half a century, there are still quite contradictory views about whether it is a reliable instrument, and if so, what it really measures. Thus, based on data from 39 female students, we first examined DMT inter-coder reliability by analyzing the agreement among trained judges in their coding of the same DMT protocols. Second, we constructed a "parallel" photographic picture that retained all structural characteristic of the original and analyzed DMT parallel-test reliability. Third, we examined the construct validity of the DMT by (a) employing three self-report defense-mechanism inventories and analyzing the intercorrelations between DMT defense scores and corresponding defenses in these instruments, (b) studying the relationships between DMT responses and scores on trait and state anxiety, and (c) relating DMT-defense scores to measures of self-esteem. The main results showed that the DMT can be coded with high reliability by trained coders, that the parallel-test reliability is unsatisfactory compared to traditional psychometric standards, that there is a certain generalizability in the number of perceptual distortions that people display from one picture to another, and that the construct validation provided meager empirical evidence for the conclusion that the DMT measures what it purports to measure, that is, psychological defense mechanisms.

Acceptability of abortion methods

This chapter has reported the findings of acceptability of prostaglandin pessaries compared with vacuum aspiration as methods for inducing abortion in a very early stage of pregnancy. Acceptability has been defined by the WHO as the degree with which a treatment method has attributes that make it perceived by a user or potential user to be consonant with his or her own sense of well-being and therefore will be used or preferred. The acceptability of the medical and surgical procedures for inducing abortion was studied in Swedish abortion patients using a pre- and post-abortion design for obtaining observations. Methods used included interview schedules, questionnaires, rating scales and attitude measuring techniques. Patients consenting to take part in the acceptability study had agreed to be randomly assigned to prostaglandin treatment, given at the clinic or self-administered by the patient at home, or to vacuum aspiration. A high degree of acceptability for the prostaglandin treatment was obtained in this group of patients who had applied for an abortion very soon after one missed menstrual period. This was indicated from the finding that the very high preference for this procedure remained unchanged in the group randomly assigned to it. Other measures of attitudes to prostaglandin treatment also indicated the unchanged positive attitude. There was a significant change in the attitude to vacuum aspiration among those assigned to this treatment, indicating that post-abortion it was more acceptable to these patients. However, 30% of them would still prefer the prostaglandin treatment, especially self-administered, in the event of another abortion. There were consistent and significant relationships found between the degree of negative emotional arousal before and after abortion and preference for the medical or surgical procedure and also the amount of complaints after abortion. Those patients who pre-abortion had preferred the self-administered procedure were, regardless of which treatment they had been assigned to, those who were least emotionally upset both before and after the treatment and also complained the least. This chapter also reported on findings of how acceptable the medical and surgical procedures can be inferred to be from comparisons of preferences and attitude measures obtained from abortion patients before treatment and from women in the same age group (who would not exclude an abortion if pregnant) in samples from outside the clinical setting. In the non-patient groups about half the subjects would prefer the medical alternative.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)