An Examination of the Construct Validity of the Rorschach Mutuality of Autonomy (MOA) Scale

Abstract

Using 100 clinical cases, we examined the construct validity of the Mutuality of Autonomy (MOA) Scale (Urist, 1977) using Westen and Rosenthal's (2003) r _{contrast − construct validity (CV)} procedure for quantifying a pattern of convergent-discriminant relationships between a target measure and a set of criterion variables. Our 15 criterion variables included the Comprehensive System (CS; Exner, 2003) variables, a CS-based measure of ego strength (Resnick, 1994), and 3 subscales from the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale (Westen, Lohr, Silk, Kerber, & Goodrich, 1990). We generated the r _{contrast − CV} coefficients to test 2 competing hypotheses: that the MOA Scale primarily measures object relations (OR) quality or that it primarily measures psychopathology. Results suggest that the MOA Scale is an equally potent measure of OR and psychopathology regardless of the MOA Scale index used.

Acknowledgments

We thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. We also thank Prachi Kene, Margaret Chan, Nick Katko, and Aaron Upton for their help with interrater reliability scoring.

Editor's Note: Radhika Krishnamurthy served as the Editor with full decision authority over this manuscript.

Notes

^a CHR, AT, and EIR based on N = 20; all other variables based on N = 23.

^a Signs of these correlations should be reversed when considering the MOAHI, which is reverse scored relative to the other MOA scales.

^b Lower scores are healthier.

^c Higher scores are healthier.

∗p < .05, two-tailed.

∗∗ p < .01, two-tailed.