A Life Position Scale
Fredrick A. Boholst
Abstract
This article describes the construction of
a Life Position Scale developed by the author. Initial items representing four convictions articulated by Berne (1972)-I'm OK
(1+), I'm not-OK (1-),You're OK (U+), and
You're not-OK (U-)-were administered to
95 participants. The top five items for each
conviction, with item-total correlations that
reached an alpha level of p < .05, were retained for a subsequent factor analysis. An
exploratory type of factor analysis constraining the process to two factors yielded
a factor neatly containing all "I" items and
another factor containing "You" items, with
the OK items taking on opposite loadings to
the not-OK items. Underlying factors seem
to be I and You factors, not factors representing OK and not-OK. The final items are
presented with suggestions for future research and a question for future theory development. Readers are free to administer
the scale in their clinical and research practice but are encouraged to establish norms
based on their culture and locale.
In an effort to measure life positions for my
doctoral dissertation, I constructed a Life Position Scale (LPS). A life position is a psychological stance that a child takes about the self
and the rest of the world. It derives from a basic conviction that individuals develop when
they are young. Convictions are firm decisions
about the OKness or not-OKness of the self (I)
and others in general (V). Convictions are presumably influenced by early script programming (referred to in transactional analysis as
the "protocol") during the nursing period and
within the context ofa two-handed transaction,
usually between mother and child (Berne,
1972). In developing these convictions, and depending on what they were constantly made to
believe about themselves, people may conclude
about themselves: I'm smart, I'm stupid, I'm
28
nice, I'm nasty, I'm as good as anybody else,
I'm inadequate, and so on (James & Jongeward, 1971/1978). When deciding about others, people may conclude: People can't be
trusted, People are wonderful, It's a dog-eatdog world, or Everybody's on to something.
These convictions can be summarized as: I'm
OK, I'm not-OK, You're OK, or You're notOK. Using the symbols (+) for OK and (-) for
not-OK, the convictions can be represented as
1+ or 1- and V+ or V-.
Convictions form the basis for the life position the person takes in relation to the self and
others. Positions can be any of the following:
1. 1+V+. "I'm OK, You're OK" is a healthy
position. People taking this position solve
problems in a constructive and realistic manner
and have a generally positive outlook on life.
This is the position a transactional analysis
therapist should take in a therapeutic relationship; in fact, it is the basis of transactional
analysis as a contractual therapy (Blackstone,
1993).
2.1+ V-. "I'm OK, You're not-OK" is a projective or "get-rid-of' position. People taking
this position are described as arrogant and antisocial. At worst, they can be killers who justify
eradication ofthe minority; at best, they may be
meddlers who go out of their way in a "holierthan-thou" attitude to convince others to
change. Clinically, this is the position of the
paranoid (Berne, 1966) or the narcissist (MeFarren, 1998).
3. 1- V+. "I'm not-OK, You're OK" is the
depressive position. Colloquially, these are the
people who live on "If onlys," and "I should
haves" (Berne, 1972) and tend to denigrate
themselves (Hunt-Cohn, 1994). The "I'm notOK, You're OK" position is the existential basis for the feeling of shame (Erskine, 1994).
Individuals in this position experience melancholia and in severe clinical cases may resort to
suicide (Berne, 1972).
4.1- U-. "I'm not-OK, You're not-OK," also
known as the futility position, is taken by those
Transactional Analysis Journal
A LIFE POSITION SCALE
who lose interest in living. Clinically, they exhibit schizoid or schizophrenic behavior. If
those taking the third position feel that "Life
isn't worth living," those taking the fourth feel
"Life isn't worth anything at all" (Berne, 1972).
Migdow (1994), in her conceptual analysis of
abuse, suggested that this position also seems
to be the one taken by child abuse perpetrators,
whose own traumatic experiences led them to
"conclude that life is not precious" (p. 180).
For the Life Position Scale I developed, ten
items were constructed for each of the four
convictions discussed by Berne (1972): I'm
OK (1+), I'm not-OK (1-), You're OK (U+),
and You're not-OK (U-). To these the test takers were to answer "All of the time," "Most of
the time," "Half of the time," "Sometimes," or
"Never."
The initial scale was administered to 95 college students, and a corrected item-total correlation was performed. A corrected item-total
correlation is the Pearson r between the total
score for each conviction and each item, with
the particular item score deducted from the total score. This is also known as item-whole or
item-remainder coefficient (Spector, 1994) and
is done to avoid inflation of the correlation
coefficient due to the presence ofthe particular
item. The top five items for each conviction
had item-total correlations ranging from .39 to
.57, with a probability level of p < .05. This
indicated that the chances are less than five in
a hundred that these correlations were spurious.
The items were then retained for a subsequent
factor analysis.
A Short Note on Factor Analysis
Factor analysis is a mathematical technique
used to summarize a large set of data by reducing it into fewer dimensions or factors. Basically, it reduces the data or clusters them based
on their intercorrelations. The grouped data can
then be named and can even be presumed to be
a function of"some underlying, latent, and hypothetical set of factors" (Hair, Anderson,
Tatham, & Black, 1995, p. 367).
For example, a researcher may have 20 sets
oftest scores from 100 students. Obviously, it
would be cumbersome to process and analyze
these individual test scores, so the researcher
Vol. 32. No. I. January 2002
runs a factor analytic procedure and extracts
two factors: one containing students' scores in
math and another containing verbal test scores.
It so happens that these two sets of tests cluster
together because the data within each dimension or factor are interrelated. Students' scores
can then be thought ofas functions ofthese two
underlying dimensions, which the researcher
may call verbal and mathematical intelligences.
The factor analytic procedure includes rotating the axes on which the data are plotted to
maximize the variance in the data set that each
factor accounts for or "captures." This, however, is quite involved and beyond the scope of
this article. Those who wish more information
may look up Hair et al.'s (1995) Multivariate
Data Analysis with Readings for a conceptual
discussion offactor analysis or Tabachnick and
Fidell's (1989) Using Multivariate Statistics
(2nd ed.) for a more mathematically oriented
discussion.
Factor Analysis of the Life Position Scale
An initial unconstrained (in terms of the
number offactors) exploratory factor analysis
was performed on the items that were retained
after the item-whole correlation analysis. However, this yielded 12 factors, which I found to
be unwieldy and difficult to interpret in light of
the theory. The next step was to rerun the
analysis, but this time constrain the extraction
to two factors. This was done based on the hypothesis that there should be two underlying
factors the items represented. However, I was
not sure whether the two hypothesized factors
would represent two polarities of OKness and
not-OKness or two factors that would represent
I and U.
Results
To my surprise and delight, the results of a
VARIMAX-rotated factor analytic procedure
extracted one factor that neatly contained all
the I items, with the 1+ and 1- having opposite
loadings, and another factor of U items, with
U+ and U- having opposite loadings (see Table
1 for the factor loadings and communalities).
The results may shed some light on a plausible assumption ofIlU factors and not underlying OKness and not-OKness. The rotated
29
FREDRICK A. BOHOLST
Table 1
Factor Analysis of the Life Position Scale (VARIMAX Rotation)
Item
I like myself.
I don't feel good about myself.
I am proud of who I am.
I feel helpless.
I feel confident about myself.
I am aware of my positive traits.
I wish I hadn't been born into this world.
I feel I won't reach my dreams.
I think others dislike me.
I believe I am basically good.
I wish some people were dead.
I find it easy to appreciate others.
Others are basically OK.
Item
I get irritated with other people.
I distrust people.
I feel suspicious of other people's intentions.
I am impatient with other people's mistakes.
Most people can be trusted.
People can do a good job.
I look forward to meeting other people.
solution shows the I factor with an eigenvalue
of 4.79, explaining only 24% of the item variance. The second factor, the V factor, has an eigenvalue of3.65, which explains 13.3% of the
item variance. Although only 37.3% ofthe total
variance has been accounted for, which prompted me to add more factors, the theoretical interpretability of the two-factor solution was
deemed enough to stop the factor extraction.
Table 2 presents the retained items for the LPS.
This will be administered to 150 participants
for my proposed dissertation entitled "The Influence of Scripts and Life Positions on Psychopathology and Positive Mental Health: A
Structural Equation Modeling."
Extracting the Life Position
Pretesting the LPS among "normal" participants, the Life Position Scale used a 5-point
Likert scale (5 = All of the time, 4 = Most of
the time, 3 = Half of the time, 2 = Sometimes,
and 1 = Never). To extract an individual's life
position (i.e., 1+V+, I-V+, 1+V-, or I-V-), the 1scores were reversed and the total score was
added to the 1+ scores, creating a global score
30
Communalities
Factor I
Factor U
.71
-.68
.67
-.63
.62
.58
-.58
-.57
-.52
.33
.02
.05
-.00
.33
.02
.06
.26
.17
.21
-.29
.513
.447
.197
.347
.384
.334
.360
.450
.409
.463
.73
-.64
-.62
.277
.391
.408
Factors I
Factors U
Communalities
.04
-.12
-.02
-.02
.17
.18
.26
.62
.63
.55
.51
-.49
-.48
-.44
.283
.272
.388
.549
.399
.262
.310
-.14
.04
-.05
for 1.Presumably, the higher the score the more
OK the person feels about himself or herself.
The median was then computed and used as the
cut-off point between the OK and the not-OK
convictions. This placed the upper 50% in the
1+ and the lower 50% in the 1-. The same
procedure was applied to the V conviction. The
V- scores were reversed and added to the V+
scores, creating a global score for V. The median was computed with the upper 50% placed
as V+ and the lower 50% as U-. Such a strategy
was deemed best since the study data were
gathered from a nonclinical sample of college
students, which statistically "forced" them to
take on a life position. Table 3 shows the descriptive statistics of the I and V global scores,
N = 95. (Note: Initial exploration of the data
did not show reliable differences among sex,
age, and the courses majored in while attending
college.)
Discussion
The objective of this article is to present the
Life Position Scale I developed in the hope that
readers might find it useful in research and
Transactional Analysis Journal
A LIFE POSITION SCALE
Table 2
Life Position Scale Items
1+
I like myself.
I am proud of who I am.
I feel confident about myself.
I am aware of my positive traits.
I believe I am basically good.
U+
I find it easy to appreciate others.
Others are basically OK.
Most people can be trusted.
People can do a good job.
I look forward to meeting other people.
clinical settings. In light of this, there are three
issues that need to be addressed.
The first relates to the assignment of a life
position. The data in Table 3 come from the 95
pretest students who participated in the LPS
construction. I have used the LPS subsequently
in workshops as an indicator of participants'
life positions, and the results seem to have been
validated by workshop participants' phenomenological reports. The median can be used as a
cut-off point to categorize the test-taker's life
position. For example, if a person scores I 37
and U 37, then he or she would be categorized
as 1-U+ or ''I'm not-OK, You're OK" because
the median score for I is 38 and the median
score for U is 36. This might not pose a problem if this were a research situation because the
researcher could proceed to plot the scores and
compute mathematical means in a nomothetic
research. However, in the clinical field, the person's opinion and reflection about his or her
life position should be taken into account and
discussed in a safe and therapeutic environment. Moreover, the mean and the standard deviation have also been useful in providing insight into the test-taker's degree of OKness or
not-OKness based on how far he or she is from
the mean. In the clinical setting, this seems to
be a better approach to exploring a person's
life position than the previous categorical assignment on the basis ofthe median. This is because varying degrees of OKness and not-OKness can be explored in an idiographic and
phenomenological light.
Vol. 32, No. I, January 2002
II don't feel good about myself.
I feel helpless.
I wish I hadn't been born into this world.
I feel I won't reach my dreams.
I think others dislike me.
UI wish some people were dead.
I get irritated with other people.
I distrust people.
I feel suspicious of other people's intentions.
I am impatient with other people's mistakes.
The second point relates to the use of this
scale in research. Researchers who wish to use
the scale are encouraged to establish their own
norms and cut-off points based on their own
population and cultural peculiarities. Once this
is done, the life positions may then be placed
under investigation as independent variables
influencing dependent variables or as dependent variables being affected by antecedent
independent variables that, to the researcher,
may be theoretically sound. This will enhance
the scale's validity as well as the validity oflife
position as a construct. For example, the scale's
validity could be strengthened by using known
groups that can theoretically be argued to fit
certain life positions. As mentioned earlier, depressives for instance, would presumably be
categorized as I-U+, while antisocial, paranoid
(Berne, 1972), and narcissistic individuals
(McFarren, 1998) might take the I+U- position.
Schizoid individuals, schizophrenics (Berne,
1972), and perhaps child abuse perpetrators
(Migdow, 1994), on the other hand, are argued
to be taking the I-U- position.
The third issue seems serendipitous. If the
reader recalls, the results of the factor analysis
came up with two factors, one containing all
the I items and the other all the U items. Note
that the factors extracted were IJU factors and
not underlying factors of OK and not-OK. This
highlights questions that I do not have answers
to and that readers might want to theorize on:
Why are there two underlying factors bearing
the "I" and the "U" and not those regarding a
31
FREDRICK A. BOHOLST
Table 3
Descriptive Statistics for the I and U Global Scores
Statistics
I
U
Mean
37.30
34.96
Standard Deviation
5.50
5.39
Median
38.00
36.00
Lowest Score
12.00
11.00
Highest Score
50.00
43.00
sense of OKness and not-OKness? Of what
theoretical importance might this finding have?
Answers to these questions might shed light on
the developmental aspects of transactional
analysis theory, particularly as it relates to
differentiation or the infant's development of a
sense of "I" as a separate entity from "¥ou."
Fredrick Boholst, an ITAA Associate Member, has a master's degree in psychology with
a major in industrial/organizational psychology. He is a doctoral candidate in clinicalpsychology at Ateneo de Manila University and a
faculty member in the Department ofPsychology at the University of San Carlos. Please
send reprint requests to him at the Department
ofPsychology, University ofSan Carlos, P. del
Rosario St., Cebu City 6000, Philippines;
email: montoya37@hotmail.com
REFERENCES
Berne, E. (1966). Principles of group treatment. New
York: Grove Press.
Berne, E. (1972). What do you say after you say hello?:
The psychology ofhuman destiny. New York: Grove
Press.
Blackstone, P. (1993). The dynamic child: Integration of
second-order structure, object relations, and self psychology. Transactional Analysis Journal; 23, 216-234.
Erskine, R. G. (1994). Shame and self-righteousness:
Transactional analysis perspectives and clinical interventions. Transactional Analysis Journal, 24, 86-102.
Hair, 1. F., Anderson, R. E., Tatham, R. L., & Black, W.
C. (1995). Multivariate data analysis with readings.
Upper SadIe River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Hunt-Cohn, M. (1994). Loneliness and the four life positions. Transactional Analysis Journal, 24, 293-294.
James, M., & Jongeward, D. (1978). Born to win: Transactional analysis with gestalt experiments. New York:
Penguin Books USA. (Original work published 1971)
McFarren, C. (1998). Narcissism: "I'm OK, you're not!"
Transactional Analysis Journal, 28. 244-250.
Migdow, J. (1994). Silencing the child. Transactional
Analysis Journal, 24, 178-184.
Spector, P. (1994). Summated rating scale construction:
An introduction. In M. S. Lewis- Beck, (Ed.), Basic
measurement (pp. 229-300). London: Sage Publications.
Tabachnick, B. G., & Fidel!, L. S. (1989). Using multivariate statistics (2nd ed.). New York: HarperCol!ins.
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Transactional Analysis Journal
Life Positions and Attachment Styles: A Canonical Correlation Analysis
Boholst, Fredrick A;Boholst, Giselle B;Mende, Michael Mark B
Transactional Analysis Journal; Jan 2005; 35, 1; ProQuest Central
pg. 62
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Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 (2012) 284 – 291
CY-ICER 2012
Life positions scale language equivalence, reliability and validity
analysis
Isa Yucel Isgor a *, Canani Kaygusuz b, ** Ahmet Ragip Ozpolat c
a
b
ncan 2400, Turkey
c
Abstract
Life positions scale developed by Boholst in 2002 consists of four sub-dimensions and 24 items. The language adaptation of the
found significant at the level of p
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