Defense Mechanism Questionnaire

The Defense Mechanism Questionnaire is a 30-item self-report of characteristic defense styles organized into four factors — Mature, Neurotic, Immature (Action), and Immature (Disavowal) — following the four-factor defense-style framework associated with Andrews, Singh, and Bond (1993). It is built entirely from public-domain IPIP items mapped onto that framework.

It is a clean-room analog, not the copyrighted Defense Style Questionnaire: it inherits neither the DSQ's items nor its published validity evidence, and results describe self-reported habitual coping styles rather than clinical defense assessments.

The notes below are reproduced from the platform's psychometrics register for this instrument — the same source-cited reliability, validity, and norms text that accompanies its downloadable report.

This clean-room IPIP-based measure assesses four defense style clusters (Mature, Neurotic, Action, Distress). Subscale reliabilities are not available from an independent published study for this specific public-domain item set.

The construct domains (mature, neurotic, action-level, and distress-based defense styles) draw on the theoretical frameworks of Andrews et al. (1993). Items were constructed in the IPIP tradition to operationalize these defense style constructs using public-domain language.

Scores are expressed as percent-of-maximum on the 1–5 accuracy scale using Higher/Average/Lower bands. No published normative tables exist for this specific clean-room scale.

“Work hard.”

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Item responses are summed within each scale (reverse-keyed items recoded first) and expressed as a percent of the maximum possible score. No normative percentile is applied — there is no verbatim-matched published norm for this exact item set.

Items drawn from the public-domain International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg, 1999; ipip.ori.org), organized by a four-factor defense-style framework (Mature, Neurotic, Immature-Action, Immature-Disavowal; cf. Andrews, Singh, & Bond, 1993).