Brief Book,Software, and Test Announcements

This study extended previous cross-cultural work regarding the tripartite model of anxiety and depression by developing Serbian translations of the Positive and Negative Affect Scale for Children (PANAS–C), the Physiological Hyperarousal Scale for Children (PH–C), and the Affect and Arousal Scale (AFARS). Characteristics of the scales were examined using 449 students (M age = 12.61 years). Applying item retention criteria established in other studies, PH–C, PANAS–C, and AFARS translations with psychometric properties similar to English-language versions were identified. Preliminary validation of the scales was conducted using a subset of 194 students (M age = 12.37 years) who also completed measures of anxiety and depression. Estimates of reliability, patterns of correlations among scales, and age and gender differences were consistent with previous studies with English-speaking samples. Findings regarding scale validity were mixed, although consistent with existing literature. Serbian translations of the PH–C, PANAS–C, and AFARS mirror the original English-language scales in terms of both strengths and weaknesses.     

Brief Book,Software, and Test Announcements

After reviewing literature detailing the ubiquity of error in research and assessment data, I describe mistakes found with MMPI-2 and Rorschach scores in an earlier publication (Meyer, 1993). The mistakes emerged from several sources, including hand-scoring the assessment measures, manually retrieving scores from patient files, and manually entering information for statistical analyses. The proportion of erroneous scores in the original study (MMPI-2 = 5.88%, Rorschach = 1.56%) was relatively small and reliability coefficients between the original and corrected scales were uniformly high (i.e., > .940). Consequently, the findings detailed in the original publication were not greatly affected by the mistakes that were made. Nonetheless, because this will not always be the case, I discuss the discrepancies as a way to sensitize researchers, clinicians, and students to the presence of error and then suggest several strategies for minimizing its impact on assessment data and research.