Validity of Rotter's Interpersonal Trust Scale: A Study of Paranoid Schizophrenics

Abstract

In constructing the Interpersonal Trust Scale, Rotter defines as . . an expectancy held by an individual or a group that the word, promise, verbal or written statement of another individual or group can be relied upon (6 , p. 651) . The scale contains 40 declarative statements. Twenty-five, such as, parents and teachers are likely to say what they believe and not just what they think is good for the child to hear (Item l o ) , contribute to the over-all trust score while 15 are filler items. Rotter ( 6 ) indicated that for college students, trust scores were related positively to religious affiliation and inversely to social-class status. No relationship was found between trust scores and age, sex, family size, and semesters completed at college. Subsequent ro publication, the scale has been employed as a measure of trust in a variety of studies without chedts on what was being measured (2, 3, 4 ) . But Fitzgerald, Pasewark, and Noah (1 ) found that the scale did not differentiate delinquent and non-delinquent groups on theoretically different trust characteristics and question its use until further validated. To determine whether the scale differentiated between a normal group and one theoretically characterized by distrust and suspicion, the scale was administered to a nonhospitalized, employed group of 47 males and 35 females and to 38 males and 33 females hospitalized with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Mean age for male normals was 38.17 yr. and for male paranoids 41.11 yr. For female normals, mean age was 47.20 yr. and for female paranoids 46.85. Mean Reiss ( 5 ) occupational decile classifications for each group were: male normals, 4.13; male paranoids, 4.00; female normals, 5.57; female paranoids, 5.36. Ss' scores are in the direction opposite to that anticipated, further questioning the validity of the scale as a measure of interpersonal trust. For both male and female paranoids mean scores and standard deviations (75.79214.14 and 81.48-t-13.96) are higher than mean scores for male and female normals (65 .662 12.62 and 68 .942 11.58). The t value for the significance of the difference between the means of the two male groups is 3.45 ( p < .01), while for the female groups it is 4.02 ( p < .01).

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