BSc (Honours)

PhD Candidate, School of Psychology

Contact details for Ms Katrina Travers KTravers@bigpond.net.au

Research topic title

A Review and Investigation into the Attributional Style Questionniare.

Description

Despite its wide use, the Attributional Style Questionniare, which measures whether a person is predominantly pessimistic or optimistic, has aspects that rarely correlate with depression and ill-health, thereby limiting the usefulness of research that use this questionniare. To address these shortcomings, we rewrote items, provided single items per item stem (as opposed to three items per item stem in the Attributional Style Questionniare, and administered the revised Attributional Style Questionniare to 320 adults. High level statistical analysis identified six separate subscales representing positive and negative aspects of the three dimensions of explanatory style, thereby replicating underlying theory. We then administed the scale to 409 adults. Again, high level statistical analysis confirmed that the revised questionniare, and all its individual subscales measure optimism and pessimism. Future studies will expand on these findings, examining how well the revised Attributional Style Questionniare correlates with variables such as depression, acheivement, and ill-health.

Supervisor

Professor Peter Creed