The Mini Questionnaire of Personal Organization (MQPO): preliminary validation of a new Post-Rationalist Personality questionnaire

Background: The Mini Questionnaire of Personal Organization (MQPO) has been constructed in order to comply with the inward/outward Personal Meaning Organization’s (PMO) theory. According to Nardi’s Adaptive Post-Rationalist approach, predictable and invariable caregivers’ behaviours allow inward focus and a physical sight of reciprocity; non-predictable and variable caregivers’ behaviours allow outward focus and a semantic sight of reciprocity. Methods: The 20 items of MQPO have been selected from 29 intermediate (n = 160) and 40 initial items (n = 204). Psychometric validation has been conducted (n = 296), including Internal Validity (Item-Total Correlation; Factor Analysis), Internal Coherence by Factor Analysis, two analyses in Discriminant Validity (n = 132 and n = 80) and Reliability by Test-Retest Analysis (n = 49). All subjects have been given their written informed consent before beginning the test. Results: The validation of the MQPO shows that the ultimate version is consistent with its postrationalist paradigm. Four different factors have been found, one for each PMO. Validity of the construct and the internal reliability index are satisfying (Alpha = 0.73). Moreover, the results obtained are constant (from r = 0.80 to r = 0.89). There is an adequate agreement between the MQPO scales and the clinical evaluations (72.5%), as well as an excellent agreement (80.0%) between the scores of the MQPO and those of the Personal Meaning Questionnaire. Conclusion: The MQPO is a tool able to study personality as a process by focusing on the relationships between personality and developmental process axes, which are the bases of the PMO’s theory, according to the APR approach. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Keywords: Adaptive Post-Rationalist Approach (APR), Personal Meaning Organizations (PMO), Mini Questionnaire of Personal Organization (MQPO)