Donna Y. Wilson's dissertation on, "African Americans, Depression, and the Thematic Apperception Test"

Donna Y. Wilson, Ph.D., Fielding's School of Psychology

This study investigated how participants reported levels of depression on the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and the relationship with their score on the Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II) based on level of acculturation. African American participants (N = 180) completed the Measurement of Acculturation Strategies for People of African Descent (MASPAD) to determine level of acculturation and the TAT and BDI-II to determine depression symptomology. The study investigated whether participants endorsed a higher level of depression on the TAT than on the BDI-II. Further, this study investigated whether individual differences in acculturation group strategy caused the participant to endorse a higher level of depression on the TAT 2 depression subset than on the BDI-II. This study also examined whether individual differences in acculturation group strategy contributed to the participants’ endorsement of a higher level of pathology (depression) on the TAT 1 total score. The null hypothesis was accepted for all hypotheses as the results were not statistically significant. Lastly, the study was to determine which acculturation group scored highest for depression on the BDI-II. While it was hypothesized that the assimilationist would show higher scores of depression on the BDI-II than the other groups, the traditionalists and the marginalists showed significantly more depression than the integrationists or assimilationists. Thus the hypothesis as formulated was not supported by the data although there were significant differences between each of the acculturation groups.

KEY WORDS: DEPRESSION, TAT, AFRICAN AMERICANS, BDI-II