Testing the factor structure of the beliefs about language learning inventory

This preliminary study examined the factor structure of the Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory in two samples of about 750 college students of English as a foreign language in Taiwan. Results of confirmatory factor analysis lend partial support to Horwitz's theoretical five-factor belief model. Subsequent exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of data show that a four-factor model represented by only 12 items performed better than other models both theoretically and empirically. This model consists of two dimensions already theorized in the inventory: Difficulty of Language Learning and Foreign Language Aptitude, and two newly interpreted dimensions, Importance of Spoken Language and Analytical Approaches to Language Learning. Although this four-factor model could be replicated in an independent sample, the factors are not reliable, suggesting the need to search for a more representative set of beliefs to tap specific aspects of language learning.     

A factor analysis of a 100-item fear survey inventory

A 100-item fear survey schedule was constructed by compiling all previously published fear surveys to effect a more comprehensive assessment technique. It was administered to 435 college students. Reliability estimates of this instrument approximated 0.87. An orthogonal factor analysis was performed, and yielded 21 interpretable factors within each sex. Sixteen of these were similar across sex. The major areas of fear response were: social criticism; medical intervention; contamination; sudden noises; cars; death.

Previous research had indicated a four factor structure. Results of this study indicate that the number of factors varies with the number of input items. The present study presents a more comprehensive picture of the underlying factor structure of fear responding.     

A significant "dream within a dream"

This brief clinical note is an attempt to clarify Freud's remarks regarding the significance of real occurrences of the "dream within a dream". There is affirmation of the reality of an actual event in the manifest dream (the "tickling" in adolescence). Certain representations regarding real events are alluded to in the manifest dream and are confirmed by the latent dream thoughts (the underlying homosexual theme involving the patient's mother and herself). Within the ongoing transference neurosis, a new understanding led this patient to experience intense sexual affects which were recalled for the first time during the course of an analytic session. The analyst's attention to this "dream within a dream" led to a facilitating active interpretation of the repressed sexual feelings. At the same time it was possible to observe a developmental arrest which had interfered with the consolidation of the patient's adolescent maturation begin to be undone by interpretation. The process of disengaging the patient from her unconscious bond with her mother (the undoing of the negative oedipal involvement) had been set in motion. The "dream within a dream" seems to represent a special defensive effort of the dream work to encapsulate the memory of one or more related actual events and the intense affects associated with them--affects whose pressure for discharge threaten to arouse the sleeper. The form the dream assumes is related to its hidden sexual origins and engages the active participation of both patient and analyst.     

A parapraxis in a dream

When a parapraxis is put on display in a dream, one can only wonder what service the willful mistake is rendering to resourceful dream work. Freud taught us that anything that appears in the manifest content of a dream may well be a disguise or a distortion of a subject that originally made an anxiety-provoking, and hence short-lived, first appearance in latent dream thoughts. Dreams in dreams and jokes in dreams have been examined from this perspective (Mahon 2002a, 2002b), and this paper focuses on the appearance and meaning of a parapraxis in a dream, with the argument that seemingly casual "mistakes" are highlighted in the manifest display to cover up some latent, much more deliberate subject matter.     

The factor structure of the state-trait anxiety inventory for children: Kindergarten through the fourth grades

The A-State and A-Trait scales of Spielberger's State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (STAIC) were administered to a total of 1786 kindergarten, 1st-, 2nd-, 3rd- and 4th-grade disadvantaged black children. For the K-2 groups, the STAIC A-State scale was administered twice; it was administered only once in the 3rd–4th grades. The A-Trait scale was administered once to all 10 groups of children. A series of factor analyses, computed separately by sex and grade level, identified 3 factors: trait anxiety and 2 distinct state anxiety factors corresponding to the anxiety-present and anxiety-absent content of the A-State items. Similar 3-factor patterns were observed for both males and females for all five grade levels. Other factor solutions were examined but considered less satisfactory in terms of simple structure and psychological meaningfulness. The results were interpreted as providing strong evidence for the state-trait distinction in anxiety research with children.     

Draw me a dream

Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy -     

不再是梦

皿..8 d﹁。山三曾经有个夜晚我梦见自己孤单一人心比沙土沉苦比石头重生活的无奈和凄楚像大锤击碎了我的心重拾那些心的碎片组合成两个字绝望忽然有一天一个柔和的声音春风一样舒心百合一样美丽清泉一样甜润是夜行人的光是孤儿的母亲是绝望者的救星是孤苦人的知音啊，那是天上     

Confirmatory factor analysis of the eating disorder inventory

The Japanese version of the Eating Disorder Inventory was completed by 204 female university students. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the 9 factors reported by Shimura, et al. (2003). Further, maximum likelihood factor analysis yielded nine factors, accounting for 48.8% of the total variance. There was also adequate fit for each of the 9 subscales. This study provided additional evidence on validity for this Japanese version.     

An analysis of a cross-cultural personality inventory: the IPIP Big-Five factor markers in Croatia

In this article, we describe the factor structure in both self-reports and peer ratings of the items in a cross-cultural Big-Five inventory in Croatia. Using 2 versions of an inventory developed from the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP; Goldberg, 1999), this is one of the first cross-national analyses of these IPIP measures. A large sample of university students (N = 519) used the translated Croatian version of the 100-item IPIP Big Five inventory to describe themselves, and they were also described by 515 of their acquaintances on the same instrument. In separate analyses of both self-reports and peer ratings, the 100-item and 50-item versions of these IPIP measures showed clear Five-factor orthogonal structures that were nearly identical to the American structure. These factors were strongly related on a one-to-one basis with those derived from a Croatian translation of Goldberg's (1992) bipolar rating scales.     

Factorial structure of the suicide intervention response inventory

Previous research has reported the development and validation of the Suicide Intervention Response Inventory (SIRI), a self-report instrument assessing a counselor's ability to select an appropriate response to the life-threatening client. The present study examined whether the response skill measured by the instrument might be multidimensional, rather than unitary as previously assumed. Inventories completed by 457 paraprofessional counselors from five suicide and crisis intervention services throughout the United States were factor-analyzed to yield their simple structure. Results suggested that the instrument is indeed multifactorial, with four component factors identified as Elaboration of the Complaint, Exploration of Suicidality, Involvement, and Reflection of Negative Feelings. The implications of these findings for training in crisis counseling and for the further psychometric development of the instrument are noted.     

A poem and a dream

Recently, a journalist in analysis had a dream that stimulated the writing of a poem, the two psychic products occurring no more than a few hours apart. Since the analysand had copious free associations to both products, believing both to be culled from the same unconscious raw material, an interesting study of an act of aesthetic creation almost in statu nascendi became possible. A concept called poem work is entertained in this paper and is compared and contrasted with the classical psychoanalytic concept of dream work, allowing some unanswerable questions to be posed and discussed in regard to the formal constitutive elements of poetry.     

Factor structure of the strong interest inventory with a Chinese high school sample

D. S. Goh and J. Yu (2001) translated the Strong Interest Inventory (SII; L. W. Harmon, J-I. Hansen, F. H. Borgen, & A. L. Hammer, 1994) into Chinese and identified a 6-factor structure of the new instrument that showed both similarities and differences with J. L. Holland's personality types (1966, 1985, 1997). The present study was undertaken to further investigate the construct validity of the SII-Chinese for a sample of 247 high school students in China. Confirmatory factor analyses did not find a good fit of the Goh and Yu (2001) model or the Holland hexagonal model to the present data. Exploratory factor analysis extracted a 3-factor solution accounting for 59.2% of the variance. The authors offer interpretations of the obtained factors and discuss implications for the use of the SII-Chinese as an assessment tool.     

Testing a simple structure hypothesis in factor analysis

It is assumed that the investigator has set up a simple structure hypothesis in the sense that he has specified the zero loadings of the factor matrix. The maximum-likelihood method is used to estimate the factor matrix and the factor correlation matrix directly without the use of rotation methods, and the likelihood-ratio technique is used to test the simple structure hypothesis. Numerical examples are presented.The work was supported by a grant (NSF-GB 1985) from the National Science Foundation to Educational Testing Service. Reproduction in whole or in part for any purpose of the United States Government is permitted.The work was carried out when the author was Visiting Research Statistician at Educational Testing Service. The author wishes to thank Dr. Frederic M. Lord for many helpful suggestions throughout the course of this study.