Self-Efficacy as a Mediator of Caregiver Coping: Development and Testing of an Assessment Model

Development and utilization of two self-efficacy measures thought to be relevant to stressed family caregivers, Caregiver Self-Care Self-Efficacy and Caregiver Problem-Solving Self-Efficacy, are described. Data obtained in the context of a psychoeducational intervention program are available for 217 caregivers of frail and/or cognitively impaired elders. Analyses of psychometric properties of the efficacy measures demonstrate good internal consistency and test-retest reliability for both measures. In addition, both measures of self-efficacy are related to depression as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory and caregiver distress as measured by the Zarit Burden Scale. Problem-Solving Self-efficacy also is related to subjective caregiver burden as measured by Zarit's Memory and Behavior Problem Checklist. Results are promising in terms of the utility of the measure and the application of self-efficacy theory to the caregiving situation. Limitations of these measures are discussed and suggestions made for improved second-generation self-efficacy scales.     

Psychometric analysis of five measures of spatial ability

This study analyzed psychometric properties of five measures of spatial ability on 96 young adults, with supplementary analysis for three of the measures on another sample of 71 young adults. Two measures were taken from the widely cited Kit of Factor-Referenced Cognitive Tests and three other measures were taken from a relatively new source originally intended as laboratory demonstrations. Previous research provided limited information on the psychometric properties of the measures. All five measures yielded adequate reliability and loaded on a single factor. Three measures yielded markedly skewed distributions. Two measures showed clear sex differences with men scoring higher but this difference seemed contaminated by a speed factor; three measures did not show a sex difference. Recommendations for use of the measures in future studies are provided.     

On the nature and direction of relationships between constructs and measures

Theory development typically focuses on relationships among theoretical constructs, placing little emphasis on relationships between constructs and measures. In most cases, constructs are treated as causes of their measures. However, this causal flow is sometimes reversed, such that measures are viewed as causes of constructs. Procedures have been developed to identify and estimate models that specify constructs as causes or effects of measures. However, these procedures provide little guidance for determining a priori whether constructs should be specified as causes or effects of their measures. Moreover, these procedures address few of the possible causal structures by which constructs and measures may be related. This article develops principles for specifying the direction and structure of relationships between constructs and measures. These principles are illustrated using examples from psychological, sociological, and organizational research.     

Relations between implicit and explicit measures of attitudes and measures of behavior: evidence of moderation by individual difference variables

The moderating role of individual difference variables (Self-Reported Habit Index [SRHI], Need for Cognition [NFC]) on relationships between implicit (Implicit Association Test [IAT], Extrinsic Affective Simon Test [EAST]) or explicit measures of attitude and behavior is assessed in two studies. A dissociation pattern is found on self-report diary measures of behavior. In Study 1, the EAST-behavior relationship is moderated by SRHI; explicit measures of the attitude-behavior relationship are moderated by NFC. In Study 2, the IAT-behavior relationship is moderated by SRHI; explicit measures of the attitude-behavior relationship are moderated by NFC. Higher levels of SRHI and NFC are associated with stronger relationships between the implicit or explicit measures of attitude and the measure of behavior. In Study 2, the SRHI x IAT interaction is replicated for an objective behavior measure. Implications for understanding the relationship between implicit and explicit measures of attitudes and measures of behavior are discussed.     

A Psychometric Review of Measures of Irrational Beliefs: Implications for Psychotherapy

In this study, measures of irrational beliefs based on the principles of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) were reviewed and contrasted based on psychometric characteristics and quality of guidelines for interpretation. The use of measures of irrational beliefs is an important component of the assessment of presenting problems in psychotherapy and may inform clinical decision making. Additionally, these measures are a helpful way to identify change in irrational beliefs and to measure the effectiveness of specific interventions to facilitate such change. While there are a number of measures of beliefs, there is considerable variability in their psychometric properties and utility for assessment. The majority of the tests are not produced by a publishing company, nor do they provide test manuals. The reliability and validity evidence presented in the publications varies considerably as do the size and quality of standardization samples, which impacts upon the ability to draw normative conclusions. Analyses demonstrated that most measures of irrational beliefs do not provide the evidence needed to adequately address the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (Standards; American Educational Research Association [AERA], American Psychological Association [APA], National Council on Measurement in Education [NCME] 1999). Discussion of the implications of this review for the development of future measures of irrational thinking by researchers as well as recommendations in the test selection process for an REBT practitioner is offered.     

Practice‐based supervision research: A network of researchers using a common toolkit

Aim: Given that various systematic reviews of supervision literature have revealed how little is known about supervision, that studies are not usually routed in practice, and that a multitude of diverse measures are used, the primary aim of this project was to support and encourage practitioner research related to supervision using a prescribed common set of instruments. Method: Funded by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), a Supervision Research Practice Network (SuPReNet) was established. A toolkit (a series of measures) that could be used routinely by practitioners was selected following the assembly of available measures of supervision and an assessment of them. Findings: The appraisal, conducted by the three authors, yielded five core measures, free for anyone to use, and accessible through the SuPReNet website. The measures are being piloted through a practice research network at a university counselling and psychotherapy research clinic where supervision data are being collected through a special module of CORE Net. Discussion: The potential yield from this initiative for practitioners, researchers, and the developing evidence‐base is discussed and a model proposed for the next generation of research on supervision.     

Considering the clinical utility of performance-based measures of childhood anxiety

Examines general issues regarding the clinical utility of performance-based measures and specifically considers the utility of performance measures relevant to childhood anxiety and fear. First, we discuss the limitations of questionnaire and interview measures of childhood anxiety and the ways in which performance-based measures may compensate for or augment the use of such measures. Second, we review the major groups of performance-based measures that are potentially relevant to childhood anxiety and discuss evidence regarding their reliability and validity. Third, in the context of a general discussion of the various ways in which an assessment procedure may have clinical utility, we discuss the extent to which the performance-based techniques reviewed possess utility. Although many of these measures show promise of one or more types of clinical utility, none currently possess sufficient documented utility to warrant their dissemination for clinical use. We conclude by recommending directions for future research to demonstrate and improve the utility of such measures.     

Accessibility effects on implicit social cognition: the role of knowledge activation and retrieval experiences

Performance on measures of implicit social cognition has been shown to vary as a function of the momentary accessibility of relevant information. The present research investigated the mechanisms underlying accessibility effects of self-generated information on implicit measures. Results from 3 experiments demonstrate that measures based on response compatibility processes (e.g., Implicit Association Test, affective priming with an evaluative decision task) are influenced by subjective feelings pertaining to the ease of retrieving relevant information from memory, whereas measures based on stimulus compatibility processes (e.g., semantic priming with a lexical-decision task) are influenced by direct knowledge activation in associative memory. These results indicate that the mediating mechanisms underlying context effects on implicit measures can differ as a function of the task even when these tasks show similar effects on a superficial level. Implications for research on implicit social cognition and the ease-of-retrieval effect are discussed.     

Beneath the surface of the therapeutic interaction: the psychoanalytic method in modern dress

This study represents a new generation of psychotherapy process research, using multiple perspectives on the data of the analytic situation, including impressions of the treating analyst, ratings of complete sessions by clinical judges, and objective linguistic measures. Computerized measures of language style developed in the framework of multiple code theory were applied to verbatim session recordings from a psychoanalytic case; the measures are illustrated in microanalyses of the process in two sessions. The results show agreement between the linguistic measures and clinical ratings based on a psychoanalytic perspective. The linguistic measures look beneath the surface of the therapeutic interaction by relying largely on lexical items of which clinicians are not likely to be explicitly aware, and enable a new perspective on the therapeutic discourse as seen in the graphic images of the microprocess. While the results of this study were limited to a single case, the automatized measures can be readily applied to large samples and in repeated single case designs. Two goals of process research, using measures such as those developed in this study, are discussed: to develop measures of mediating variables that can be used to identify specific treatment effects in comparative outcome studies; and, beyond this pragmatic aim, to assess development of capacities for self-exploration and self-regulation as psychoanalytic treatment goals.     

Influence analysis of ranking data

This paper develops diagnostic measures to identify those observations in Thurstonian models for ranking data which unduly influence parameter estimates that are obtained by the partition maximum likelihood approach of Chan and Bentler (1998). Diagnostic measures are constructed by employing the local influence approach that uses geometric techniques to assess the effect of small perturbations on a postulated statistical model. Very little additional effort is required to compute the proposed diagnostic measures, because all of the necessary building blocks are readily available after a usual fit of the model. The work described in this paper was partially supported by the grants from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (RGC Ref. No. CUHK4186/98P and RGC Direct Grant ID2060178). The authors are grateful to the Editor and four anonymous referees for their helpful comments.     

Laboratory and performance-based measures of childhood disorders: introduction to the special section

Serves as an introduction to a special section of the journal on laboratory and performance-based measures of childhood disorders. The articles in the special section were part of the work of a task force established by Division 12 of the American Psychological Association on "Upgrading the Science and Technology of Assessment and Diagnosis." In this introduction, I raise a number of issues involved in the use of laboratory and performance-based measures for the assessment of childhood psychopathology that cut across the different disorders covered in the special section. Some of these issues are common to most techniques used in the assessment of childhood psychopathology; others are more specific to this particular method of assessment. However, by focusing on these issues related to the use of laboratory and performance-based measures, it will hopefully encourage a critical examination of all techniques currently being used in the assessment of psychopathology and highlight important issues involved in translating measures that were developed primarily for use in research into forms that are useful in clinical practice.     

Spatial distribution of visual attention: Perceptual sensitivity and response latency

Studies of the spatial distribution of visual attention have shown that attentional facilitation monotonically decreases in a graded fashion with increasing distance from an attended location. However, reaction time (RT) measures have typically shown broader gradients than have signal detection (SD) measures of perceptual sensitivity. It is not clear whether these differences have arisen because the stages of information processing indexed by RT measures are different from those indexed by SD measures, or whether these differences are due to methodological confounds in the SD studies. In the present set of experiments, the spatial distribution of attention was studied by using a luminance detection task in an endogenous cuing paradigm that was designed to permit accurate calculations of SD and RT measures for targets at cued and uncued locations. Subjects made target-present/absent decisions at one of six possible cued or uncued upper visual hemifield locations on each trial. The results from three experiments suggest that the differences between broad and focal attentional distributions are not the result of different stages of information processing indexed by RT measures as opposed to SD measures. Rather, the differing distributions appear to reflect variations in attentional allocation strategies induced by the perceptual requirements typical of RT paradigms as opposed to SD paradigms. These findings support numerous prior studies showing that spatial attention affects perceptual sensitivity and that the strategic allocation of attention is a highly flexible process.     

A theoretical framework for understanding self-report and observational measures of pain: a communications model

Self-report and observational measures of pain are examined from the perspective of a model of human communication. This model examines the experience of pain as affected by intrapersonal and contextual factors, the process whereby it is encoded into expressive behaviour, and the process of decoding by observers prior to their engaging in action. Self-report measures primarily capture expressive pain behaviour that is under the control of higher mental processes, whereas observational measures capture behaviour that is less subject to voluntary control and more automatic. Automatic expressive behaviours are subject to less purposeful distortion than are behaviours dependent upon higher mental processes. Consequently, observational measures can be used and have clinical utility as indices of pain when self-report is not available, for example, in infants, young children, people with intellectual disabilities or brain damage, and seniors with dementia. These measures are also useful when the credibility of self-report is questioned and even when credible self-report is available. However, automatic behaviours may be more difficult for observers to decode. The model outlined herein takes into account the role of various human developmental stages in pain experience and expression and in understanding the utility of self-report and observational measures. We conclude that both observational and self-report measures are essential in the assessment of pain because of the unique information that each type contributes.     

Relationship between Type A behavior pattern and mental and physical symptoms: a comparison of global and component measures

Although the Type A behavior pattern (TABP) is typically considered a set of distinct components, most studies of TABP have used global measures, which collapse several components into a single index. These measures are inherently multidimensional and, as such, contain several conceptual and methodological problems. In this study, data from 240 executives were used to compare global and component TABP measures as predictors of mental and physical symptoms. Global measures included the Bortner scale, the Framingham scale, and the Jenkins Activity Survey. Component measures were constructed by recombining items from the global measures on the basis of results from previous confirmatory factor analyses (Edwards, Baglioni, & Cooper, 1990). Results indicate that the component measures were superior to the global measures in terms of number of relationships detected, interpretability, and total explanatory power. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Experimental measures of cognitive privilege/deprivation and some of their correlates

An operational definition of intellectual privilege and deprivation was used to develop measures of that construct in each sex from information furnished by 10th-grade students in Project Talent about their family and health background. Information such as reports of high school grades that directly reflected the ability of the students was excluded. The correlation between the experimental measure and the Talent intelligence composite is about .65 in contrast to the usual value of about .40 for a traditional measure of socioeconomic status. Sex differences in the items keyed are minimal. Using a similar definition, measures were also developed for Vernon's mechanical-spatial major group factor (1960), but the level of validity achieved is lower. The measures of privilege/deprivation developed for the two criteria show some degree of differential validity, but there is more generality in the two kinds of privilege than in tested abilities. The measures of intellectual privilege are almost congeneric measures of general intelligence, but there are significant departures from parallel profiles of relationships with other cognitive tests in Talent. The measures of intellectual privilege for both sexes add to the accuracy of prediction obtained from the intelligence criterion of scores on verbal academic and aesthetic information, but add nothing in predicting scores on measures of spatial visualization and rote memory. The possibility of constructing a test of general intelligence using item types that would minimize the correlation with privilige/deprivation is discussed.     

Subjective Well-Being: The Convergence and Stability of Self-Report and Non-Self-Report Measures

ABSTRACT The validity of self-report measures of subjective well-being (SWB) was examined and compared with non-self-report measures using a sample of 136 college students studied over the course of a semester. A principal axis factor analysis of self- and non-self-report SWB measures revealed a single unitary construct underlying the measures. Conventional single-item and multi-item self-report measures correlated highly with alternative measures, with theoretical correlates of SWB, and with a principal axis factor underlying five non-self-report measures of well-being. Comparisons of family versus friend informant reports demonstrated the considerable cross-situational consistency and temporal stability of SWB. Evidence of the discriminant validity of the measures was provided by low correlations of the various SWB measures with constructs theoretically unrelated to well-being. It was concluded that conventional self-report instruments validly measure the SWB construct, and that alternative, non-serf-report measures are useful for providing a comprehensive theoretical account of happiness and life satisfaction.     

An evaluation of empirical measures of source identification

Source identification refers to memory for the origin of information. A consistent nomenclature is introduced for empirical measures of source identification which are then mathematically analyzed and evaluated. The ability of the measures to assess source identification independently of identification of an item as old or new depends on assumptions made about how inconsistencies between the item and source components of a source-monitoring task may be resolved. In most circumstances, the empirical measure that is used most often when source identification is measured by collapsing across pairs of sources (sometimes called “the identification-of-origin score”) confounds item identification with source identification. Alternative empirical measures are identified that do not confound item and source identification in specified circumstances. None of the empirical measures examined provides a valid measure of source identification in all circumstances.     

A comparative study of association measures

This paper discusses the general problem of measuring the association between an independent nominal-scaled variableX and a dependent variableY whose scale of measurement may be interval, ordinal or nominal. The theoretical foundations of a wide range of asymmetric association measures are discussed. Some new measures are also suggested. Fifteen of these association measures, some previously suggested, some new, are singled out for a computer-assisted numerical study in which we compute the value actually taken by each measure under a wide variety of conditions. This comparative study provides important insights into the behavior of the measures.     

Interpersonal Correlates of Narcissism in Adolescents

Researchers investigated the relationship between measures of interpersonal behavior and narcissism. Eight octant measures of interpersonal behavior were constructed, and validity and reliability estimates were obtained. High school and junior high school students (N = 333) completed five measures of narcissistic vulnerability, eight octant measures of interpersonal behavior, and a measure of social desirability. Canonical correlational analysis indicated a specific pattern of interpersonal behaviors for individuals with differing levels and types of narcissistic vulnerability. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) indicated that scores on several of the scales were found to differ significantly by sex and by treatment for emotional, behavioral, or educational difficulties. Implications for counseling are considered.     

Lattice-based similarity measures between ordered trees

A clustering algorithm has recently been developed by Reitman and Rueter to express both the structure of chunking in multi-trial free recall and the order of chunk production. The resulting ordered trees differ from ordinary rooted trees in that the elements of a chunk, at any level, may be restricted to a specific ordering. In order to make comparisons of long-term memory structures between subjects, a measure of the similarity between trees is needed. Previously developed similarity measures are shown to be inadequate for ordered trees. Lattice theory is used to generate new similarity measures suited to these richer structures. First, ordered trees are shown to form a nonmodular, graded lattice. Then, moves through this lattice are defined and used to produce several distance measures. These new measures are compared both to each other, and to existing measures, by examining the properties of each measure, and through application to hypothetical trees. The lattice-based measures prove to be theoretically superior, but lack computational ease. The general problem of describing paths in a nonmodular lattice is discussed.