This study investigated the argument that trait estimates of hostility and guilt may be obtained from repeated testings with state measures. A sample of 77 male high school students were administered a checklist of 38 adjectives eight times over 4 wk. Stability of the items indicated by correlations for repeated-measures ranged from –.59 to .64. A factor analysis of items summed over administrations indicated that as many as seven factors may exist. There are, however, a number of serious psychometric difficulties with this procedure: scales tended not to produce a normal distribution, and average repeated-measures correlations for items varied widely about .18.
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