IDIOGRAPHIC AND NOMOTHETIC CHILD ASSESSMENT - CONVERGENCE BETWEEN THE CALIFORNIA CHILD Q-SORT AND THE PERSONALITY-INVENTORY FOR CHILDREN

Tested the convergence between the California Child Q-Sort and Personality Inventory for Children which are, respectively, idiographic and nomothetic parent-report instruments for describing a child's personality. Thirty-two children referred for psychological evaluations, and their mothers, were Ss. The 100-item Q-Sorts were reduced to two primary measures of ego control and ego resilience, using the template-matching method. A third variable represented the child's similarity with the "typical" clinic child in the sample. Correlational analyses showed the predicted convergence between the construct of ego undercontrol in the Q-Sort and those scales tapping the acting-out factor of the PIC (Delinquency and Family Relations) but no significant relation between ego resilience and the cognitive development factor of the PIC. Also noteworthy was the substantial (-0.73) correlation between the PIC Infrequency (F) Scale and the typical child template generated with the Q-Sort. Results are suggestive of the clinical utility of the CCQ.