Correlations between Standard English and Dialectical Spanish Versions of Five Personality Scales

Abstract

Although there have been increased attempts to provide bilingual, bicultural mental health services to Spanish-speaking residents of major Southwestern cities, little effort has been directed toward the development and testing of Spanish versions of easily administered personality scales for use in assessment, treatment, and evaluation. The Spanish versions of the five tests were developed for use as a part of a project involving native Spanish-speaking clients at the Austin Child Guidance Clinic. Tests selected for the project included the Rational Behavior Inventory that provides an index of rational beliefs based on 37 items scored on a five-point Likert scale (2, 3, 4) . Other scales included a five-item Anomia scale developed by Srole; a 10-item Self-esteem scale developed by Rosenberg; a 10-item Dogmatism scale developed by Schulze; and a 4-item Authoritarianism scale developed by Lane ( 1 ) . A preliminary version of each scale was developed by integrating independently developed stimulus items constructed by rwo native bilingual social work students of Mexican descent. The preliminary items were then independently reviewed by two native bilingual social workers of Mexican descent for choice of words, sentence construction, and verbal flow. The final items were then selected jointly by the social work professionals. Thirty-two native bilingual students of Mexican descent from four sections of a lower division Mexican American studies class at the University of Texas at Austin completed both the Spanish and English versions of the test. Half of the students first complered the English version followed by the Spanish version of the test, and the others completed the test in the opposite order. Correlation coefficients computed for the English and Spanish versions of each test were all significant ( p < .DO1 ) . Values of the correlations included: Rational Behavior Inventory (.93 ) , Self-esteem scale ( .91), Anomia scale (.97 ) , Authoritarianism scale (.77), and the Dogmatism scale ( .88). Differences between the means of the English and Spanish versions of all five tests were analyzed using t test. Means and standard deviations for the English and Spanish versions, respectively, were: Rational Behavior Inventory (22.78 and 5.33; 23.34 and 5.63), Self-esteem scale (8.08 and 2.20; 7.83 and 2.41), Anomia scale (2.31 and 1.51; 2.17 and 1.47), Authoritarianism scale (2.00 and 1.16; 1.93 and 1.24), and Dogmatism scale (4.69 and 1.89; 4.86 and 2.10). A significant difference between mean scores was found only for the Anomia scale ( p < .05). The difference between the mean scores on the English and Spanish versions of the Anomia scale were small but significant; SDs were small. These results provide preliminary support for use of the Spanish dialectical versions of the four scales.