Measurement of Personality Change in an Alcoholic Treatment Program: Further Validation of the Personal Orientation Dimensions

Abstract

This study was designed to examine the validity of the Personal Orientation Dimensions (POD) for measuring changes following an inpatient alcoholic treatment program and to describe these changes in terms of concepts of the actualizing person. Differences between pretest and posttest raw scores were significant for 9 of 13 POD scales. Eight of the changes were in the direction of greater actualizing and one in the direction of greater social conformity. It was concluded that the POD was sensitive to changes resulting from the present alcoholic treatment program and that these changes were generally in the direction of greater actualizing.