Wehmeyer M L
Department of Research and Program Services, Arc National Headquarters, Arlington, TX 76010.
Psychol Rep. 1994 Aug;75(1 Pt 2):527-37. doi: 10.2466/pr0.1994.75.1.527.
The locus of control construct has been useful for explaining individual and group variability in motivation, personality, and achievement. Despite a general agreement that people with mental retardation generally lack control in their lives, the construct has not been used to any meaningful extent to explain less than optimal life outcomes experienced by this group. One reason that this circumstance exists is that people with mental retardation often answer questions in an acquiescent manner, thereby jeopardizing the reliability and validity of the measure. The present study examined the reliability of one measure of locus of control, the Adult version of the Nowicki-Strickland Internal-External Scale, for 491 adults and adolescents with mental retardation and, using alternative forms of this scale, assessed the extent to which acquiescence contributes to externality in this population. Results from repeated-measures analysis of variance suggest that the acquiescence contributes nominally to measurement error with this population. Suggestions are made to improve reliability with the scale.
控制点结构对于解释动机、个性和成就方面的个体及群体差异很有用。尽管人们普遍认为智力迟钝者在生活中通常缺乏掌控力，但该结构尚未被广泛用于解释这一群体所经历的不尽如人意的生活结果。出现这种情况的一个原因是，智力迟钝者常常以默许的方式回答问题，从而损害了测量的可靠性和有效性。本研究考察了控制点的一种测量工具——诺维茨基 - 斯特里克兰内外控量表成人版——对491名成年和青少年智力迟钝者的可靠性，并使用该量表的替代形式，评估了默许在该群体中对外控倾向的影响程度。重复测量方差分析的结果表明，默许对该群体的测量误差影响不大。文中还提出了提高该量表可靠性的建议。
