Doctoral Thesis
A factorial investigation of Savage's aged personality screening scale across four immigrant Western groups in Australia
Professional Doctorate, Murdoch University
1998
Abstract
The Research Problem investigated in this thesis was whether Savage's Aged Personality Screening Scale could be employed to assess personalities across different immigrant groups of Western culture in Australia, using the new validation method of confirmatory factor analysis.
Savage hypothesised that personality in the aged consisted of the four dimensions of Extraversion-Introversion, Anxiety, Depression and 'Self-concept'. From information from the literature review, it was concluded that Savage (along with many other researchers) mistook the dimension of 'self-esteem' for that of 'self-concept' as evident in the items he used to represent this dimension.
The findings of this thesis confirmed the validity of Savage's four dimensional Scale across the 548 old as well as young individuals, researched, comprising Australians, the standard group; Seychellois, of unknown cultural bias; Italians, regarded here as 'middle of the road' in the individualist-collectivist cultural dimension; and Croatians, representing the least individualist of the Western groups. However, of the 20 original items, only 16 identical items were valid for the Australian and Seychellois groups, 17 items for the Italian group and 10 items for the Croatian group in a 4-factor model.
From normative and clinical data results, females appeared more anxious than males, older individuals were more depressed and introverted, and most of them had lower Self-esteem than younger individuals, except the Italian group, who had higher Selfesteem. These results were consistent with those from previous researchers, reinforcing the probable validity of the Scale.
Finally, the cultural bias of the Seychellois appeared to be more individualist than collectivist.
It is thus concluded that, irrespective of the minor weaknesses discovered, Savage's Scale would be generally useful to clinicians in Australia, who served the needs of a multicultural clientele.
Details
- Title
- A factorial investigation of Savage's aged personality screening scale across four immigrant Western groups in Australia
- Authors/Creators
- Angela Rosemary German-Belmont
- Contributors
- Doug Savage (Supervisor)Iain Walker (Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Murdoch University; Professional Doctorate
- Identifiers
- 991005544375507891
- Murdoch Affiliation
- Division of Social Sciences, Humanities and Education
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Doctoral Thesis
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