Acceso usuarios
Walter Lizandro Arias Gallegos, Renzo Rivera Calcina, María Elena Rojas Zegarra, Jenny Adeli Geldres García, Marlene A. Starke, Evert N. Apaza
Desde el surgimiento de la psicología cognitiva, las cogniciones han tomado gran relevancia para explicar una gran variedad de fenómenos psicológicos. Un constructo que ha sido empleado en el ámbito clínico y forense es el de las distorsiones cognitivas que tiene poder predictivo sobre la conducta violenta.
Las distorsiones cognitivas se definen como cogniciones irracionales y negativas: pensamiento egocéntrico, culpar a los demás, minimización y asumir lo peor. Para evaluar las distorsiones cognitivas se ha empleado el cuestionario How I Think (“Cómo pienso”), que ha sido validado para población hispanoparlante, pero no contaba con una versión validada en Perú. La presente investigación tuvo como objetivo analizar las propiedades psicométricas de una prueba que evalúa las distorsiones cognitivas en una muestra de adolescentes de la ciudad de Arequipa, Perú.
Se evaluó a 2803 estudiantes nivel secundario (48.9 % mujeres y 51.1 % varones) entre 13 y 19 años, a través del cuestionario How I Think de Barriga y Gibbs (1996). El procesamiento psicométrico implicó el análisis de la validez por medio del análisis factorial confirmatorio, la confiabilidad por el método de consistencia interna y la invarianza factorial según el sexo.
Los resultados psicométricos indican que la prueba tiene validez de constructo con tres factores: culpar a los demás/asumir lo peor, la minimización y el egocentrismo. También tiene índices de confiabilidad adecuados y no presenta sesgos entre varones o mujeres.
Se concluye que el cuestionario How I Think es un instrumento válido y confiable para evaluar a los adolescentes peruanos, aunque presenta variaciones con respecto a su estructura original.
Since the consolidation of the cognitive psychology and its diffusion around the world, the cognitions have taken a place of great relevance in order to explain a large variety of psychological events and phenomena. Nowadays the cognitive psychology is the dominant paradigm in the wide world of psychology, including obviously the Ibero-american countries. One construct that had been used in the field of clinical and forensic psychology is related to cognitive distortions, which have predictive power over the violent and aggressive behavior in children, adolescents, and adult people (Peña & Andreu, 2012). The cognitive distortions can be defined as a kind of negative and irrational cognitions (Ellis, 1999) that are used to explain or justify the aggressive behavior, and they are also linked to delinquent behavior (Roncero et al., 2016).
Cognitive distortions can be classified in two types: self-serving and self-debasing cognitive distortions. In the first case, there are four types of self-serving cognitive distortions:
Self-centered, Blaming others, Minimizing/ Mislabeling, and Assuming the worst. In the second case, there are also four self-debasing cognitive distortions: Catastrophizing, Overgeneralizing, Personalizing, and Selective abstraction. Both types have great influence in people’s beliefs, emotions, attitudes, and behaviors (Barriga et al., 2008). Several instruments have been applied to measure cognitive distortions. Some of them are orientated to measure the self-serving cognitive distortions and some others are orientated to measure the self-debasing type, such as The Cognitive Errors Questionnaire or The Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire. One of the most used tests to assess the self-serving cognitive distortions is the How I Think Questionnaire, that has been validated in Spanish-speaking population such as Spain, with adequate goodness of fit indexes and reliability; but there is not a validated version in Peru (Rojas et al., 2019).
The present research pretends to analyze the psychometrical properties of the How I Think Questionnaire, a mental test that measures the cognitive distortions. Following that aim, this instrument was applied in a sample of adolescents from Arequipa (Peru), comprised of 2 803 middle and upper High School students (48.9 % female and 51.1 % male) between 13 and 19 years old. The version used of the How I Think Questionnaire was the one developed and validated by Barriga and Gibbs (1996), which has 54 items with five levels of Likert’s scale response. The psychometrical process implies the analysis of validity by confirmatory factor analysis, reliability by the internal consistency method, and factorial invariance according to the sex of the adolescents that participated in the sample. The psychometrical results indicate that the How I Think Questionnaire possesses construct validity with three factors: Blaming others/Assuming the worst (which contains two factors from the original version), Minimizing and Self-Centered. It also has adequate reliability indexes, estimated by McDonald’s Omega Test, and there are no trends to male or female scores according to the factorial invariance applied, taking sex as a comparison criterion. It is concluded that the How I Think Questionnaire is a valid and reliable instrument to assess Peruvian adolescents who live in Arequipa, although it presents some variations compared to its original structure. And the How I Think Questionnaire can be applied in male and female adolescents from Arequipa without the risk of biased scores. However, it is recommendable to perform new psychometric studies that include adolescent’s samples from all of Peru to obtain a standardized version for the Peruvian population that could be used in several fields of psychological work. The version presented in this research is a useful instrument to assess cognitive distortions in educational, social, and forensic psychology, by mental health specialists in Arequipa Metropolitan City.
