Selection and psychological adjustment of individuals living in small isolated groups in the French Antarctic stations

Publisher Summary This chapter presents a report of psychological selection methods and the first results of attempted validation for the 1971 expeditions to Terre Adelie, Kerguelen, and New Amsterdam. The selection methods included medical and biographic questionnaires followed by an interview with a psychiatrist and intelligence and personality tests followed by an interview with a psychologist. The objective rating scales was constructed to evaluate various aspects of adjustment to the environment, job, and social situation. The validation of the selection system took place at two levels: (1) the general level of the correlations between predictions and results and (2) the specific correlations or predictive values of each item or group of items from the questionnaires and tests. It is effective to maintain a dual selection system consisting of psychiatric interviews based upon objective biographical information and psychological interviews with psychometric examinations and explorations with projective tests.