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The psychometric distinctiveness of self-reported anxiety and depression in patients with chronic pain was investigated. The item-level responses of 220 patients with heterogeneous pain conditions from the Beck Depression Inventory and State--Trait Anxiety Inventory State--Anxiety scale were submitted to common factor analysis. Three first-order factors were identified: depression, anxiety-absent, and anxiety-present. One second-order factor of negative affect was also identified. Correlations of first-order factor scores with other psychometric measures suggested only minor distinctiveness. The findings indicated that it is possible to distinguish anxiety and depression psychometrically in patients with chronic pain but suggested that negative affect may be the primary underlying construct of the affective experience of these patients.

Evidence from 85 adult medical outpatients supported psychometric comparability of the 2 halves of the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (SCT) Form 81 and of the female and male forms of the SCT. There was slightly stronger internal consistency for the first versus the second half of the SCT. Each half correlated highly with the ogive total protocol rating and 36-item-sum rating. Intercorrelations of the 2 halves with external measures also suggested essentially equivalent relations. For the 30 identical items across gender, the median correlation between individual item ratings with the item-sum ratings was nearly equal for women and men. When the 6 nonidentical items were considered with the identical items, the median item-total correlation was slightly higher for men (45) than women (41). This difference was accounted for by the slightly larger variability in the mate subsample. Practically speaking, the 2 halves and the female and male forms may be used with minimal concern regarding psychometric comparability in similar medical outpatient settings.

This modified replication of Jurich and Holt's (1987) test-retest study investigated the stability of scores on the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (SCT; Loevinger, 1985; Loevinger & Wessler, 1970; Loevinger, Wessler & Redmore, 1970) across alternate instructional formats. Initially, 90 adult participants completed the SCT using standardized instructions. After a 1-week interval participants were readministered the SCT based on random assignment to either a standardized instruction (control) group, a role-play instructional set, or a best-effort instructional set. A repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance yielded statistically significant differences in ego level scores across the 3 instructional sets. The differences in ego level scores were approximately one-half level higher for the role-play and best-effort instructional sets. Effect sizes for the experimental instructional sets ranged from .23 using item sum scores to .45 using total protocol ratings. Results are supportive of Jurich and Holt's (1987) findings, indicating that the standardized instruction SCT may be susceptible to the motivational set of the test-taker.