Validação do Procedimento de Desenhos-Estórias em pacientes psicóticos maníaco-depressivos hospitalizados [Validation of the Drawing-and-Story Procedure in manic-depressive psychotic inpatients]

AL’OSTA, Alfredo J.S. (1984) – Validação do Procedimento de Desenhos-Estórias em pacientes psicóticos maníaco-depressivos hospitalizados [Validation of the Drawing-and-Story Procedure in manic-depressive psychotic inpatients]. Master’s Dissertation. Campinas (SP), Instituto de Psicologia da PUCCAMP, 79 pp. 

The present study used the Drawing-and-Story Procedure (D-E), the designated instrument to clinically investigate personality. The study dealt with the simultaneous validation of (D-E) using as a criterion the psychiatric diagnosis. The objective was to test if D-E can differentiate hospitalized manic-depressive psychotics from subjects classified as “Normal”, and in this way, emphasize the use of D-E with adult subjects. Before this, only one study using this tool was applied to adult males. We utilized 60 adult female subjects of low socio-economic status. Group I consisted of thirty manic-depressive psychotics hospitalized for 2 or more months in three hospitals in two different cities in the state of Paraná. Group II consisted of 30 subjects who belonged to a primary education course for adults in the city of Londrina, the two groups were paired according to age and intellectual level. We only included subjects that received 24 points or more on Pierre Weil’s Non-Verbal Intelligence Test (INV-C). The 60 protocols of D-E were classified by 3 judges, psychologists who had professional experience, informed only about the subjects sex, age, intellectual level, and socio-economic cultural level. Each judge classified each of the completed design story instruments in 5 alternatives: N1 (Normal without certainty), N2 (Normal with certainty), PMD1 (Manic-depressive psychotics without certainty), PMD2 (Manic-depressive psychotics with certainty), NS (Don’t know). The null hypotheses (Ho) tested were: a) The judges do not have the same judgement standard between themselves in reference to the protocols of the study, that is, they disagree between themselves; b) The Drawing-and-Story Procedure would not discriminate normal subjects from subjects with manic depressive psychosis. There were 58 agreements out of 60 between the 3 judges regarding discrimination between the “normal” subjects and the psychotic subjects. That is, in 96,7% of the protocols occurred at least a tie between two judges, independently of the classification being in accordance or not regarding the analyzed category. The results obtained by the Contingency Coefficient of the 3 judges and the respective value of Chi Square permitted us to reject the null hypothesis (H0) at a level of significance of .01 in favor of the alternative hypothesis, that is, that the D-E procedure enables the discrimination of “Normal” subjects from subjects with the psychiatric diagnosis of manic depressive psychosis. The value obtained for the correlation was relatively near to the maximum limit permitted, with the exception of judge 2; however the of Ccorr, through its relation with the Correlation Coefficient Allowed an estimation of correlation of .90 for Judge 1, .83 for Judge 2, and .87 for Judge 3, indicating very high correlation. To verify the tendency of NS responses given by Judge 1 whose frequency was different from the other judges in favor to the other alternatives of judgment (N or MDP), we used the Binomial Test, once that the expected frequencies were lower than 5. These calculations were not necessary for judges 2 and 3 because they gave the NS response only once, and even so, tied with Judge 1. The Binomial Test which was applied to the NS judgements of Judge 1 did not reject the null hypothesis, which was that the percentage of NS judgements would be the same for both normal and MDP subjects at a level of significance of .01. The statistical treatments utilized in the process of this work demonstrated that: a) exists an agreement among the judges about the criteria of judgment of D-E; b) the judgments about the D-E are dependent on the real characteristics of the subjects, differentiated as “Normal” and MDP. That is, it was demonstrated the efficiency of discrimination between subjects that were normal and MDP, through the judgements of the D-E, in the conditions specified in this study. The lack of judgment (NS responses) were distributed randomly between the two categories of subjects showing no tendency in favor of one of the categories. In truth, we can see that this report does not enable us to conclude that D-E discriminates manic-depressive psychosis among other psychopathological scenes, so posterior studies should be conducted for this kind of discrimination.

Walter Trinca Copyright 2001 – All rights reserved.

Developed by BAUM Marketing