Abstract
The Young Schema Questionnaire (YSQ, Young, 1994) was developed to assess Early Maladaptive Schemas (EMS), which account for the dysfunctional beliefs in individuals with personality disorders or maladaptive personality traits. This study aims to investigate the factor structure, the reliability and the validity of the original YSQ – Short Form (Young & Brown, 1998; YSQ-SF, 15 EMS) as well as an extension including 16 EMS, based on the 16 factor structure of the YSQL2 (Young & Brown, 1998) in a community sample. The sample consisted of 672 participants (51% females; Mage-total = 44.34; SDage-total = 16.24). Results show evidence for both the 15 and 16 factor solution of the YSQ-SF with good internal consistency coefficients for the different scales. Significant gender differences were observed for Self-Sacrifice (females higher) and Entitlement (men higher), along with different patterns of correlations between age and Insufficient Self-Control (r = –.19), Enmeshment (r = –0.16) and Self-Sacrifice (r = .13). Furthermore, Big Five personality traits were significantly associated with several schema scales. In sum, we can conclude that both the YSQ-SF15 and 16 are valid instruments to assess EMS among a Flemish community sample. However, given the unique additive value of the 16th EMS (Social Undesirability) in predicting lower scores on Extraversion and Openness, the use of the YSQ-SF16 could be favored.
Highlights
Schema theory is a theoretical framework developed by Jeffrey Young (Young, 1994)
Concerning gender differences, our results indicated that women scored significantly higher on Self-Sacrifice, whereas men reached significantly higher scores on Entitlement with small effect sizes (
These results seem to indicate that women tend to be more focused on the needs of significant others; whereas men tend to be more focused on achieving their own goals and tend to feel more entitled to special rights as compared to women
Summary
Central in this theory is the concept of Early Maladaptive Schemas (EMS) These EMS are considered to develop from negative childhood experiences into maladaptive core beliefs which are self-perpetuating and (without appropriate treatment) rather resistant to change. In Young’s schema theory, the EMS are categorized into five higher-order schema domains representing unmet emotional needs in childhood: disconnection, impaired autonomy, impaired limits, other directedness and disinhibition (see Table 1). To assess these EMS, Young developed the Young Schema Questionnaire (YSQL2; Young, 1994), initially comprising 205 items and 16 EMS scales
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