Test-retest reliability of the test of nonverbal intelligence (TONI)

Test-retest reliability of the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI) was investigated. Fifty students randomly selected from first and second grades were administered Form A and Form B of the TONI on two occasions 3 weeks apart. Test-retest correlation coefficients were calculated for all 50 subjects. The results showed high test-retest reliability: Correlation coefficients were .89 (Form A) and .83 (Form B). Parallel form reliability was also high: Form A correlated with Form B .88 on the first administration and .86 on the second administration.     

Test-retest reliability of standard and emotional stroop tasks: an investigation of color-word and picture-word versions

Previous studies have examined the reliability of scores derived from various Stroop tasks. However, few studies have compared reliability of more recently developed Stroop variants such as emotional Stroop tasks to standard versions of the Stroop. The current study developed four different single-stimulus Stroop tasks and compared test-retest reliabilities. The four Stroop tasks included two standard Stroop tasks (color-word and picture-word) as well as two emotional Stroop tasks (color-word and picture-word). The four Stroop tasks were administered on two occasions, separated by 1 week, to 28 undergraduate students. Test-retest reliability coefficients were high for standard and emotional Stroop tasks when reliability was measured using response latencies alone. However, test-retest coefficients were unacceptably low when reliability estimates were calculated using difference scores. The findings have important implications for clinical and experimental use of standard and emotional Stroop tasks.     

The two-week and five-week dependability and stability of the depressive personality disorder inventory and its association with current depressive symptoms

Within the psychometric framework of assessing a measure's dependability (Watson, 2004), this study considered the 2-week and 5-week test-retest correlations of the Depressive Personality Disorder Inventory (DPDI; Huprich, Margrett, Barthelemy, & Fine, 1996). DPDI scores were compared with the test-retest reliability (i.e., dependability) of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996). Three-hundred sixty-three undergraduates completed the DPDI and BDI-II and were reevaluated at either a 2- or 5-week interval. Two- and 5-week test-retest correlations for the DPDI were .89 and .82, respectively, and test-retest correlations for the BDI-II were .88 and .75. The effect sizes of the mean scores' changes in the measures across time were larger for the DPDI (ds = .48, .23) than the BDI-II (ds = .28, -.21), with mean BDI-II scores not significantly differing at the 5-week assessment from the baseline mean. Although the 5-week retest correlation for the BDI-II trended toward decreasing reliability from baseline, it did not significantly differ from the DPDI 5-week retest correlation. It is concluded that both measures are dependable and assess latent propensities toward depressive thoughts and feelings, along with the current influence of depressive states.     

Reliability and validity of some specific fear questionnaires

Normative psychometric data on a Swedish translation of fear questionnaires concerning snakes, spiders, public speaking, and mutilation given to 223 college students are presented. High internal consistencies were found for all four questionnaires, and low intercorrelations among the four inventories emerged. In a separate study the inventories were administered to a clinical sample of spider and snake phobics. Phobics scored higher on their respective phobic scale than the college group but did not differ from controls on mutilation or public speaking scales. A significant negative correlation emerged between snake and spider scores among the phobics. One year test-retest reliabilities in the phobic sample were high. Finally, snake and spider phobics viewed and rated phobic and nonphobic slides. Snake phobics rated snake slides as more aversive than spider slides, whereas the reverse was true for spider phobics. The correlation between fear ratings and questionnaire scores was significant. Use of these scales in evaluating therapeutic changes is encouraged.     

Synthetic and analytic thought: Similarities and differences among art and science students

Evidence is presented suggesting that differences as well as similarities exist between the thought processes of art and science students during the insight phase of problem solving. The nature of these thought processes was investigated at different time periods throughout the creative process with 122 students in art and science. Half of the subjects solved tasks corresponding to their orientation, and the other half solved problems not of their orientation. This allowed an evaluation of the variance attributable to task, as opposed to orientation. After solving the task, subjects completed the Feelings and Thoughts Questionnaire (FTQ) and a battery of personality inventories, including the NEO Personality Inventory, the Adjective Check List, and the Experience Inquiry. The FTQ is a self‐report inventory in which subjects rate lists of adjectives describing the thoughts and emotions that occurred before, during, and after the insight. Internal consistency and convergent validity were established for the two scales of the FTQ namely the Synthetic and Analytic Thought Scales. Comparisons indicated that art students tended to receive higher scores than science students on the Synthetic Thought Scale, especially after the insight. The nature of the art and science task did not contribute to variance in mode of thinking scores. The findings suggest that a differentiated view of the thought processes involved in artistic and scientific creativity is needed.     

Responses of Japanese and American university students to the STAI items that assess the presence or absence of anxiety

Symptom endorsements and item response patterns on the anxiety-present and anxiety-absent items of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Form Y (Spielberger, 1983) for 149 Japanese (99 living in Japan and 50 studying in the United States) and 76 American university students were compared. Although mean scores for the state and trait anxiety-absent items were comparable for Japanese students living in Japan and Japanese international students studying in the United States, the scores of both Japanese groups were significantly higher than those of American students. These differences were attributable to much higher scores of Japanese students on anxiety-absent items that corresponded to a lack of positive feelings. Japanese students had a tendency to inhibit positive (anxiety-absent) feelings, resulting in higher anxiety scores. Responses to anxiety-present and anxiety-absent items should be considered independently in scoring anxiety scales.     

Validating an indirect measure of clarity of feelings: evidence from laboratory and naturalistic settings

This study analyzed the reliability and validity of an indirect measure of clarity of feelings that is based on response latencies (RTs) of mood ratings. Fifty-two participants completed a laboratory session and an experience-sampling week with 6 measurement occasions per day. Shorter RT of mood ratings measured in the laboratory (but not self-reported dispositional clarity) predicted higher overall mood regulation success during the experience-sampling week. As a new indirect ambulatory measure of clarity, RTs of mood ratings were measured on handheld devices during the experience-sampling week. The new ambulatory RT measure of clarity demonstrated good psychometric properties. Within-occasions reliability (internal consistency) was satisfactory, and between-occasions reliability (consistency of aggregated scores) was high. Ambulatory RT of mood ratings demonstrated moderate to high convergence with RT of mood ratings measured in the laboratory session. Both RT measures were unrelated to self-reported dispositional clarity of feelings. However, momentary RT converged with a self-report measure of momentary clarity on the within-persons level: Participants were faster to rate those mood items that they were more certain about. Evidence for the predictive validity of the new ambulatory RT measure was provided by the finding that on the within-persons level, shorter RT (but not self-reported momentary clarity) predicted higher mood regulation success and better mood at subsequent measurement occasions. The results suggest that RT of mood ratings can be used as a reliable and valid indicator of an individual's clarity of feelings in laboratory and experience-sampling studies.     

Test settings and the sensorimotor performance of infants with Down's syndrome

The effects of test setting (home vs classroom) on the sensorimotor performance of 7 Down's syndrome infants were examined. The 7 Uzgiris-Hunt scales were administered on 10 occasions over a 4-mo. period, yielding 5 home-classroom comparisons for each subject. Analyses of mean performance scores, intersetting test-retest reliability, and intrasetting stability indicated that test performance was minimally affected by test setting, but that intrasetting interindividual invariance in performance was less stable when the subjects were tested in a classroom environment.     

The spirited, the observant, and the disheartened: social concepts of optimism, realism, and pessimism

The social concepts of optimism, pessimism, and realism were investigated by assessing the prototypical acts (thoughts, feelings, goals, and actions) that laypersons assign to optimists, pessimists, and realists responding to a controllable and an uncontrollable situation. Optimists and realists, but not pessimists, were seen as adjusting their behavior to the situation. However, whereas optimists were characterized by flexibility in thoughts and feelings but invariance in goals and actions (i.e., they pursued their goals in both controllable and uncontrollable situations), the act profiles assigned to realists varied on all of these dimensions. The profile assigned to pessimists was characterized by cognitive, affective, motivational, and behavioral invariance, encompassing negative construals of the situation, giving up, and a focus on distress.     

Reliability and Validity of Single-Item Self-Reports: With Special Relevance to College Students' Alcohol Use,Religiosity, Study,and Social Life

The authors tested the assumption that single-item measures have unacceptably low reliability and validity. On 2 occasions 11 weeks apart, college students reported on the frequency and quantity of alcohol consumption, 2 religious behaviors, time of study and of socializing (focal items), and other qualities and characteristics. Most test-retest reliabilities were good to excellent; objective facts were more reliable than subjective evaluations; and target items had good validity when correlated with 2-week nightly log records of corresponding behaviors in a multimethod multitrait matrix. The exception was self-reported study, with relatively low reliability and validity, suggesting the non-trait-like quality of this behavior. Single-item measures may be better than commonly thought.     

Development and evaluation of CHIPASAT, an attention test for children: II. Test-retest reliability and practice effect for a normal sample.

The CHIPASAT (Children's Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task), developed to assess auditory-verbal attention, was administered to a sample of 70 normal school children on two occasions separated by an interval of approximately 4 weeks. A significant practice effect was found, independent of age and sex, with performance improved by approximately 20% on retest. The test-retest reliability of .90 was significant, indicating task stability. The practice effect was consistent with that reported in the literature for the adult PASAT, and reasons for this effect are discussed. Initial test raw scores on WISC--R Arithmetic and Digit Span subtests yielded low but significant correlations of .38 and .35 with CHIPASAT scores.     

Measuring psychological mindedness: validity,reliability, and relationship with psychopathology of an Italian version of the Balanced Index of Psychological Mindedness

Psychological mindedness (PM) is an underinvestigated, but important construct in psychoanalytic psychotherapy research and practice. It refers to the interest in and ability for reflecting on one's thoughts and feelings, and it represents an important precondition for insight-oriented therapy to be successful. Notwithstanding, very few instruments are available to measure PM. The current investigation aimed at evaluating the validity and reliability of the Balanced Index of Psychological Mindedness (BIPM; Nyklí?ek & Denollet, 2009, Psychological Assessment, 21, 32–44), a brief measure of PM. In a first study, factor structure, internal consistency, and concurrent validity of the BIPM were tested, along with the relationship between the BIPM and a continuous measure of general distress, using a sample of 298 Italian students. In a second study, test-retest stability analyses were completed using a new, different, Italian student sample (N = 58). In a third study, the BIPM scores of a clinical sample with diagnosis of mood spectrum disorders (N = 30) were compared to those of an age-, gender-, and education-matched nonclinical sample. Overall, results indicate that the BIPM is a psychometrically sound instrument that can be used in clinical practice to obtain rapid information about the client's mentalization skills and assess PM.     

Semantic response consistency and protocol validity in structured personality assessment: the case of the NEO-PI-R

In this study we tested the hypothesis that groups of NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992a) protocols identified as potentially invalid by an inconsistency scale (INC; Schinka, Kinder, & Kremer, 1997) would show reduced reliability and validity according to a series of psychometric tests. Data were obtained from 2 undergraduate student samples, a self-report group (n = 132) who provided NEO-PI-R self-ratings on 2 occasions separated by a 7- to 14-day interval and an informant group (n = 109) who provided ratings of well-known friends or relatives on 2 occasions separated by a 6 month interval. INC scores from the Time 1 protocols were used to divide these samples into low, moderate, and elevated inconsistency groups. In both samples, these 3 groups showed equivalent levels of reliability and validity as measured by: contingency coefficients for the 20 INC item responses across occasions; test-retest intraclass correlations of NEO-PI-R domain scores; convergent correlations with Goldberg's (1992) Bipolar Adjective Scale scores; and discriminant correlations between the 5 NEO-PI-R domain scores. The similarity of results across self-report and informant assessment contexts provides additional evidence that semantic consistency approaches to assessing protocol validity may overestimate the prevalence of random or careless response behavior in standard administration conditions. Several theories are discussed that accommodate the existence of valid inconsistency in structured personality assessment.     

Situational approach to assessment of guilt: Development and validation of a self-report measure

The present research developed and evaluated a self-report measure of guilt that encompassed diverse, typical guilt experiences. Behavior-analytic procedures were employed to construct the Situational Guilt Scale (SGS), in which 22 items assessed anticipated guilt feelings for a wide range of naturally occurring specific situations. The SGS was administered to young-adult college students (mean age, 24 years), along with measures of guilt in traditional moral contexts, depressive tendencies, and socially desirable responding. A test-retest study of the SGS was separately conducted. Results indicated that SGS scores had statisfactory internal consistencies and considerable stability. Correlational findings and comparisons of SGS scores in a typology of depressive experience showed relationships of SGS guilt scores with dependent and self-critical tendencies and support the validity of the measure. The findings and utility of the SGS are discussed.Grant 13487 from the PSC-CUNY Research Award Program of the City University of New York provided support for this project. The Committee on Research Computing of the City University of New York funded the use of computer facilities.     

Content Analyses of the Beliefs of Academic Procrastinators

Although relevant nomothetically-based personality literature has made great advances in recent years correlating traits to measures of procrastination, little is known about the specific irrational beliefs of procrastinators, especially when they are actively avoiding tasks or situations. Based on theories from Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), it was hypothesized that compared to non-procrastinators, college student academic procrastinators would show greater self depreciation, greater other depreciation, greater life condition depreciation, and a lower frustration tolerance. Academic procrastination was operationally defined by quartile distributions on two self- report measures and three classroom-based assignments. Procrastinators and non-procrastinating students were given instructions to write approximately 500 words about their thoughts and feelings while they were in the process of actively putting off a specific, real event. While actually procrastinating, students logged on to a web site and made text entries describing what was going through their minds. Data were analyzed with the Psychiatric Content and Diagnosis Program Version 3 (PCAD 3; Gottschalk and Bechtel in Psychiatric content and diagnosis: the PCAD 3. GB Software, Brighton, MI, 2007). Procrastinators and non-procrastinators differed on relevant PCAD scales, supporting the hypotheses derived from REBT theory. Treatment implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Psychometric, diurnal, and electrophysiological correlates of activation.

Several studies were performed using Thayer's Activation-Deactivation Adjective Check List (AD-ACL). Factor analysis of college students' scores identified a single activation factor representing a continuum ranging from sleep through wakefulness. Next, changes over the diurnal cycle in activation factor scores were demonstrated. One-week test-retest reliability was also investigated. Finally, activation scores were related to pulse rate, respiration rate, and skin resistance level under passive and active conditions. Correlations between factor scores and electrophysiological measures were higher than were intercorrelations of electrophysiological measures, indicating that scores on this revised activation factor represent a valid measure of phenomenological bodily activation level.     

A coefficient alpha for test-retest data

Transient errors are caused by variations in feelings, moods, and mental states over time. If these errors are present, coefficient alpha is an inflated estimate of reliability. A true-score model is presented that incorporates transient errors for test-retest data, and a reliability estimate is derived. This estimate, referred to as the test-retest alpha, is less than coefficient alpha if transient error is present and is less susceptible to effects due to item recall than a test-retest correlation. An assumption underlying the test-retest alpha is essential tau equivalency of items. A test-retest split-half coefficient is presented as an alternative to the test-retest alpha when this assumption is violated. The test-retest alpha is the mean of all possible test-retest split-half coefficients.     

Temporal stability of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity short-form: test-retest data over one week

This study evaluated the test-retest reliability of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity short-form. 39 Northern Irish undergraduate students completed the measure on two occasions separated by one week. Stability across the two administrations was high, r = .92, and there was no significant change between Time 1(M = 25.2, SD = 5.4) and Time 2 (M = 25.7, SD = 6.2). These data support the short-term test-retest reliability of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity short-form.