The Development Of The Clinical Perfectionism Scale

Perfectionism has been closely associated with many mental disorders, such asdepression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders. But the researchers’understanding to perfectionism has not yet reached a unified understanding. Theunderstanding of perfectionism experiences a change from ill and unidimensional, illand multidimensional to positive and negative, and now the understanding ofperfectionism begains to come to that perfectionism is ill with a deeper understandingabout perfectionism. This study combed important concepts and theories in the fieldof perfectionism, and put forward a new concept of perfectionism and perfectionismdimensionsons on the basis of clinical experience, developing a new perfectionismmeasurement-the clinical perfectionism scale, which has important theoretical andpractical significance to researches on perfectionism. Theoretically, it helps deepenthe understanding on perfectionism, and promote researches on perfectionism moredeeply. Practically, it provides a new mental health assessment tool for clinicalworkers, and helps prevent and treat mental disorders.To ensure the clinical perfectionism scale is reliably and valid, this study clusteredfive college students samples (The number of samples:149,264,26,700and70),then analyzed detailed the reliablility and validity of the scale, including the contentvalidity, the structure validity, the convergent validity, the criterion-related validity,the internal consistency reliability and the retest reliability by SPPS16.0andLisrel8.70.The content validity of the clinical perfectionism scale is got through thatpsychology experts evaluate the relevance between items and their dimensions. Theresults showed that the relevance between items and their dimensions is high,suggesting that the content validity of the scale is high.This study analyzed the structure validity from three aspects.(1) Item analysis:Analyzing the correlation coefficient between item and its dimension, the resultsfound all the correlation coefficients are above0.500, and the coefficients and thecorrelation coefficients between items and other dimensions are greater than0.200.(2)Confirmatory factor analysis: Analyzing the four-dimension structure ofindividual-high expectation, individual-high criticism, interpersonal-high expectationand interpersonal-criticism by structural equation model, the results found that four-dimension structure fitting is good, and the factor loading of all the items areabove0.50.The convergent validity is got mainly through analyzing the correlation coefficientsbetween the clinical perfectionism cale and developed perfectionism scale, includingthe Frost multidimensional perfectionism scale, the Hewitt mltidimensionalperfectionism scale and the revised almost perfect scale. The results found thecorrelation coefficients between the high expectation vs high criticism dimension,individual vs interpersonal dimension of the clinical perfectionism scale and thecorresponding dimension of those scales are greater than or equal to0.332, and thecorrelation coefficients between the high expectation vs high criticism dimension,individual vs interpersonal dimension of the clinical perfectionism scale and thenon-corresponding dimension less than or equal to0.292. In addition, this study alsoexamines relationship between the neuroticism dimension of Eysenck personalityquestionnaire of and each dimension of the clinical perfectionism scale, and theresults showed that individual-high criticism dimension and the neuroticismdimensionis unrelated, other all dimension is related with the neuroticism dimension.Criterion related validity is got by investigating the relationship between variouspsychological variables and the dimensions of the clinical perfectionism scale. Resultsfound that except the individual-high expectation dimension and expectationdimension, all other dimensions of the clinical perfectionism scale and scale score arenegatively related or irrelevant with positive psychological variables, and are positiverelated with negative psychological variables.Reliability analysis results showed that the internal consistency reliability and theretest reliability of the clinical perfectionism scale are more than0.700.Results of the reliability and validity analysis show that the clinical perfectionismscales is a reliable and valid measurement, which can be used to assess the level ofindividual perfectionism.