A FACTORIAL STUDY OF THE FELS PARENT BEHAVIOR SCALES

Abstract

The application of methods of multiple factor analysis to problems of the description of personality at the adult and near-adult level is beginning to give a clearer picture of the basic variables involved, and their interrelations. The work of Thurstone, Cattell, Guilford, and many others is resulting in a definition of personality variables at the adult level which seem likely to be of central importance for future studies of personality development throughout childhood, and for studies of the effects of various methods of treatment during childhood on eventual personality makeup. Cattell's (4) recent book in particular, with its extensive collation of results from a wide variety of factor studies, indicates the prospect of the discovery of basic personality variables which will receive the general acceptance now accorded some variables in the ability area. Further work on methods of measurement, on techniques of analysis, and on stability and change of behavior at the adult level, can be expected to result in a set of some twenty or thirty variables or traits, in terms of which a comprehensive and meaningful cross-sectional description of personalities in any specific population of adults can be given. For a population of children, prediction of adult status on this set of descriptive variables can be made in two ways: (i) by the extrapolation forward in time of measured characteristics of the children, and (2) by use of the total complex of extra-child variables which may be related to personality development, such as characteristics of the parents, of the culture, the neighborhood, the educational system, etc. For prediction of the future development of intelligence, the first of these methods is most effective, at least from the age of six years. For personality development, this forward extrapolation has proved less nearly adequate than in the case of intelligence, and more attention is consequently directed toward the complex of background variables, which includes all the extra-individual influences on behavior.