Means-Ends Thinking in Public School Maladjusted Adolescents

Abstract

Means-end thinking, or the ability to orient oneself to and conceptualize the means of moving towards a goal, develops or is crystalized during adolescence and is deemed necessary for adequate social adjustment. The present study used the Means-Ends Problem-Solving (MEPS) Procedure, a structured projective device to: 1) determine if this instrument could effectively discriminate between two groups of public school adolescents who differed in their level of social adjustment; and, 2) explore if the MEPS procedure could be an effective testing instrument for use in the diagnosis of behaviorally disordered (BD) public school adolescents. Thirty behaviorally disordered adolescent students and thirty adolescents who were not behavioral disordered (NBD) were administered the MEPS. Students were matched for age, sex, and grade level. The two groups did not differ on IQ scores or parents' levels of education. A 2(Group) x 4(MEPS Categories) ANOVA with repeated measures on the MEPS variable was used to analyze the data. Results indicated that the NBD students produced significantly more Relevant Means than did the behaviorially disordered students while the BD students produced significantly more No-Means responses. However, no significant differences were found between the groups on either the Irrelevant Means or No-Response categories. The two groups did differ significantly on the overall Relevancy Score indicating that the NBD students responded to the stories more frequently with Relevant Means than did the BD students. The MEPS procedure was effective in discriminating the means-end thinking of public school adolescents who differ in their levels of social adjustment. Some support is given for the use of the MEPS as a diagnostic instrument with adolescents who are deficient in their social adjustment.

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