Summary
An index of psychiatric symptomatology was administered to a Puerto Rican sample living in a Midwestern industrial community. Five hypotheses were tested. (1) It was hypothesized that those Puerto Ricans who had migrated to the Continental United States would have higher symptomatology scores than the Puerto Ricans who were raised in the Continental United States. (2) It was hypothesized that, across the entire Puerto Rican sample, high anomia scores would be accompanied by high symptomatology scores. (3) It was hypothesized that, among all Puerto Ricans, women would have higher symptomatology scores than men. (4) Age was hypothesized to be positively related to the symptomatology scores of the entire Puerto Rican sample. (5) Education was hypothesized to be inversely related to Puerto Rican symptomatology scores. All five hypotheses were rejected. The results indicated that a high degree of response set bias was present. It was recommended that researchers engaging in the field study of mental disorders include controls for response set bias in their survey instruments.
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This work was supported by a Faculty Research Grant from the University of Akron.
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Krause, N., Carr, L.G. The effects of response bias in the survey assessment of the mental health of puerto rican migrants. Soc Psychiatry 13, 167–173 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00579331
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00579331