The psychometric properties of the Quality of Life Inventory in an Australian community sample

The Quality of Life Inventory (QOLI, Frisch) is an importance‐weighted measure of life satisfaction that has been found to possess adequate psychometric properties in US and clinically‐based samples. The current study aimed to investigate the normative distribution, factor structure and key psychometric properties of the QOLI in an Australian general community sample. Results indicated that the Australian sample (n = 259) reported slightly better quality of life than the US‐based standardisation sample. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that a three‐factor model provided the best fit for the data. Psychometric properties were all generally found to be adequate and close to Frisch's reported levels. In conclusion, this study indicated that the QOLI may be used in the Australian context with confidence. Future research could examine the clinical utility of the three‐factor model.     

ROC curves show that the revelation effect is not a single phenomenon

The revelation effect describes the increased tendency to call itemsold when a recognition judgment is preceded by an incidental task. In theory, the effect could come about either from a more liberal response bias or from a change in underlying memory sensitivity. Using analyses of receiver-operating characteristic curves, we show that the revelation effect occurs for each of these reasons, but under different empirical conditions. A shift in response bias fully accounts for the revelation effect when revealed items are unrelated to the subsequent recognition probes. However, a change in memory sensitivity contributes to the effect when revealed items are identical to the recognition probes. Thus, the revelation effect encompasses at least two distinct phenomena.     

Clinical Validation of the Swedish Version of the Quality of Life Inventory in Crime Victims with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and a Nonclinical Sample

The Swedish version of the Quality of Life Inventory (QOLI) was cross-culturally validated with a crime victim sample (N = 53) with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a nonclinical group (N = 100) with no lifetime and current psychiatric disorder from the general population in the Stockholm county of Sweden. The QOLI showed excellent internal consistencies in the clinical and the nonclinical sample. In addition, PTSD participants displayed a significantly lower self-perceived quality of life in 13 out of 16 domains of life than the nonclinical individuals. Furthermore, the QOLI was inversely correlated with interview and self-report measures of PTSD symptoms, depression, and anxiety. Overall, the results support the utility of the Swedish QOLI version as a potentially useful measure of self-perceived quality of life in Swedish clinical and nonclinical samples. The results are discussed in relation to the Swedish cross-cultural validation of the QOLI, methodological limitations and future directions.     

Diagnostic efficiency among psychiatric outpatients of a self-report version of a subset of screen items of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-TR Personality Disorders (SCID-II)

This article describes the identification of a 10-item set of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Personality Disorders (SCID-II) items, which proved to be effective as a self-report assessment instrument in screening personality disorders. The item selection was based on the retrospective analyses of 495 SCID-II interviews. The psychometric properties were studied in a prospective validation study in a random sample of Dutch adult psychiatric outpatients, using the SCID-II interview as the gold standard. First, all patients completed the short questionnaire. One week later, they were interviewed with the full SCID-II. After another week, the short questionnaire was readministered. According to the scores obtained with the full SCID-II, 97 patients (50%) had a personality disorder. The set of 10 SCID-II items correctly classified 78% of all participants. The sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative power were 0.78, 0.78, 0.78, and 0.78, respectively. The results based on the retrospectively obtained data were rather similar to those obtained in the prospective validation study. Therefore, it is concluded that the set of 10 SCID-II items can be useful as a quick self-report personality disorder screen in a population of psychiatric outpatients.     

Measuring behavior in genetic disorders of mental retardation

As researchers have examined the so-called "behavioral phenotypes" of different genetic mental retardation conditions, the measurement of behavior becomes increasingly important. From earlier, more global examinations of noteworthy behaviors or profiles, recent researchers have moved from reliance on a single, all-encompassing questionnaire to more multimethod, multireporter approaches. This paper summarizes strengths and weaknesses in utilizing parent-report questionnaires and checklists; psychiatric nosology and specific psychiatric questionnaires; observational studies; reports from individuals with mental retardation themselves; profile analyses of psychometric test and subtest scores; and "grouping" analyses of items (factor analysis) and people (cluster analysis). Although we advocate a mixture of approaches to behavioral assessment, in future work researchers will require more theoretically driven methods for studying behavior, greater acknowledgment that the child's behavior is simply one event in ongoing interactions-transactions with other people, and more attention to age-related changes in behavioral phenotypes.     

Predictive and treatment validity of life satisfaction and the quality of life inventory

The clinical and positive psychology usefulness of quality of life, well-being, and life satisfaction assessments depends on their ability to predict important outcomes and to detect intervention-related change. These issues were explored in the context of a program of instrument validation for the Quality of Life Inventory (QOLI) involving 3,927 clients from various clinical settings. Clinical norms were also generated that supplement existing nationwide norms. The predictive validity of the QOLI and life satisfaction in a university counseling center was supported in terms of its ability to predict academic retention both by itself and in conjunction with cumulative grade point average 1 to 3 years in advance. The QOLI was also found to be sensitive to treatment-related change in two naturalistic clinical settings and samples. The interpretation and intervention utility of measures of quality of life, well-being, and life satisfaction are discussed with respect to clinical and positive psychology research.     

Factorial structure of the kidcope in Hong Kong adolescents

The Kidcope (A. Spirito, L. J. Stark, & C. Williams, 1988), a brief screening measure of coping strategies for children and adolescents, was subjected to exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses in a sample of adolescents in Hong Kong. A 2-factor model was found to fit the data when only the 2 emotional regulation items were treated separately and were allowed to load on the 2 different factors. Further analyses showed that factor loadings, factor variances, and factor covariance were invariant across age and gender. On the basis of the factor analyses, the authors created 2 composite scores, representing control-oriented and escape-oriented coping strategies. Implications for the use of the Kidcope in research and preventive intervention are discussed.     

Personality Inventory Responses of Males With Medically Intractable Seizures

The psychosocial adjustment of 50 male patients to intractable seizures was assessed by comparing their responses to a combined version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality inventory (MMPI) and the California Psychological inventory (CPI) to the responses of 50 medical, psychiatric, or nonclinical controls who denied seizures. The two groups were significantly different (p < .01) on one MMPI and 10 CPI scales. Significant (p < .01) between-group differences were also rejected in 29 of the 704 personality inventory items. Those items were rationally clustered according to content into six conceptually, identifiable subscales; 30 additional items with similar content that were significant at the .05 level were added to those subscales. Comparison of subscale scores of an additional 30 seizure and 30 nonseizure subjects using analysis of variance revealed F values that reached statistical significance (p < .05) in four cases and approached significance (p = .07) in another. Applying coefficients derived from discriminant analysis of the first samples correctly classified 99% of the original patients, and 85% of the validation subjects. Results reveal a logical, understandable, and largely adaptive response to intractable seizures and offer little support for the concept of a dysfunctional or pathological interictal personality style.     

Personality inventory responses of males with medically intractable seizures.

The psychosocial adjustment of 50 male patients to intractable seizures was assessed by comparing their responses to a combined version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) to the responses of 50 medical, psychiatric, or nonclinical controls who denied seizures. The two groups were significantly different (p < .01) on one MMPI and 10 CPI scales. Significant (p < .01) between-group differences were also reflected in 29 of the 704 personality inventory items. Those items were rationally clustered according to content into six conceptually identifiable subscales; 30 additional items with similar content that were significant at the .05 level were added to those subscales. Comparison of subscale scores of an additional 30 seizure and 30 nonseizure subjects using analysis of variance revealed F values that reached statistical significance (p < .05) in four cases and approached significance (p = .07) in another. Applying coefficients derived from discriminant analysis of the first samples correctly classified 99% of the original patients and 85% of the validation subjects. Results reveal a logical, understandable, and largely adaptive response to intractable seizures and offer little support for the concept of a dysfunctional or pathological interictal personality style.     

Replies to comments on "Which method delivers greater signal-to-noise ratio: Structural equation modelling or regression analysis with weighted composites?" by Yuan and Fang (2023)

Observational data typically contain measurement errors. Covariance-based structural equation modelling (CB-SEM) is capable of modelling measurement errors and yields consistent parameter estimates. In contrast, methods of regression analysis using weighted composites as well as a partial least squares approach to SEM facilitate the prediction and diagnosis of individuals/participants. But regression analysis with weighted composites has been known to yield attenuated regression coefficients when predictors contain errors. Contrary to the common belief that CB-SEM is the preferred method for the analysis of observational data, this article shows that regression analysis via weighted composites yields parameter estimates with much smaller standard errors, and thus corresponds to greater values of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In particular, the SNR for the regression coefficient via the least squares (LS) method with equally weighted composites is mathematically greater than that by CB-SEM if the items for each factor are parallel, even when the SEM model is correctly specified and estimated by an efficient method. Analytical, numerical and empirical results also show that LS regression using weighted composites performs as well as or better than the normal maximum likelihood method for CB-SEM under many conditions even when the population distribution is multivariate normal. Results also show that the LS regression coefficients become more efficient when considering the sampling errors in the weights of composites than those that are conditional on weights.     

The Value of Measuring Impact Alongside Symptoms in Children and Adolescents: A Longitudinal Assessment in a Community Sample

The impact that psychiatric symptoms have on the lives of young people is central to clinical practice and classification. However, there is relatively little research on impact and its association with symptoms. This paper examines how well impact can be measured and how it relates to psychiatric outcomes. On four separate occasions over 3 years, symptoms and impact were assessed in a UK epidemiological sample (n?=?4,479; 51.5 % boys) using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) as reported by parents, youths and teachers. Disorders were ascertained using the Development and Well-Being Assessment. An impact scale made of items about distress and impairment demonstrated considerable internal consistency, cross-informant correlations, and longitudinal stability by all reporting sources. Impact at baseline was a strong predictor of psychiatric disorder 3 years later after accounting for psychiatric disorders and symptoms measured at baseline: odds ratio OR?=?2.10, 95 % Confidence Interval (CI) [1.50, 2.94] according to parent-rated impact and OR?=?1.71, CI [1.08, 2.72] according to teacher-rated impact. Changes in impact over time were predicted, but not fully accounted for, by symptoms measured at baseline. Impact can be reliably and easily measured across time, and it may be clinically useful as an independent predictor of future symptoms and psychiatric disorders. More studies are needed to understand inter-individual variation in the impact caused by equivalent symptoms.     

Sensitivity and specificity of MMPI-2 neurologic correction factors: receiver operating characteristic analysis

A number of Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) items have been hypothesized to reflect neurologic symptomatology, rather than psychopathology, among closed-head-injury (CHI) patients. Some investigators have proposed a correction factor interpretive approach, which involves the deletion of such items from the MMPI-2 profile, as a method of reducing the probability of artificial clinical scale elevations due to the symptoms of CHI. The present study employed receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of three correction factors. All three factors demonstrated strong sensitivity when discriminating CHI patients from normal individuals but demonstrated poor specificity when discriminating CHI patients from psychiatric patients. These findings suggest that caution should be applied in using MMPI-2 neurologic correction factors, particularly with patients who might have comorbid psychiatric conditions.     

The aftermath of memory retrieval for recycling visual working memory representations

We examined the aftermath of accessing and retrieving a subset of information stored in visual working memory (VWM)—namely, whether detection of a mismatch between memory and perception can impair the original memory of an item while triggering recognition-induced forgetting for the remaining, untested items. For this purpose, we devised a consecutive-change detection task wherein two successive testing probes were displayed after a single set of memory items. Across two experiments utilizing different memory-testing methods (whole vs. single probe), we observed a reliable pattern of poor performance in change detection for the second test when the first test had exhibited a color change. The impairment after a color change was evident even when the same memory item was repeatedly probed; this suggests that an attention-driven, salient visual change made it difficult to reinstate the previously remembered item. The second change detection, for memory items untested during the first change detection, was also found to be inaccurate, indicating that recognition-induced forgetting had occurred for the unprobed items in VWM. In a third experiment, we conducted a task that involved change detection plus continuous recall, wherein a memory recall task was presented after the change detection task. The analyses of the distributions of recall errors with a probabilistic mixture model revealed that the memory impairments from both visual changes and recognition-induced forgetting are explained better by the stochastic loss of memory items than by their degraded resolution. These results indicate that attention-driven visual change and recognition-induced forgetting jointly influence the “recycling” of VWM representations.     

Solving the measurement invariance anchor item problem in item response theory

The efficacy of tests of differential item functioning (measurement invariance) has been well established. It is clear that when properly implemented, these tests can successfully identify differentially functioning (DF) items when they exist. However, an assumption of these analyses is that the metric for different groups is linked using anchor items that are invariant. In practice, however, it is impossible to be certain which items are DF and which are invariant. This problem of anchor items, or referent indicators, has long plagued invariance research, and a multitude of suggested approaches have been put forth. Unfortunately, the relative efficacy of these approaches has not been tested. This study compares 11 variations on 5 qualitatively different approaches from recent literature for selecting optimal anchor items. A large-scale simulation study indicates that for nearly all conditions, an easily implemented 2-stage procedure recently put forth by Lopez Rivas, Stark, and Chernyshenko (2009) provided optimal power while maintaining nominal Type I error. With this approach, appropriate anchor items can be easily and quickly located, resulting in more efficacious invariance tests. Recommendations for invariance testing are illustrated using a pedagogical example of employee responses to an organizational culture measure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

The dynamic appraisal of situational aggression: an instrument to assess risk for imminent aggression in psychiatric inpatients

Considerable research has attempted to delineate the demographic and clinical characteristics of high-risk psychiatric patients and identify salient modifiable aspects of aggression prone environments. Recently, there has also been increased interest in the development and testing of structured schemes for the assessment of risk for aggression within inpatient psychiatric settings. Although some of these methods show acceptable predictive validity, their ability to inform day-to-day treatment and management decisions is limited. The current research was designed to identify existing and novel risk factors that would assist staff to identify and manage the risk for aggression in psychiatric inpatient populations. Results showed that assessments supported by structured risk measures were more accurate than unaided clinical judgements based only on nurses' clinical experience and knowledge of the patient alone. Seven test items emerged that were maximally effective at identifying acute psychiatric patients at risk for engaging in inpatient violence within 24 hours; these items have been combined in the development of the Dynamic Appraisal of Situational Aggression. Empirical analyses and clinical experience support the efficacy of the instrument in assisting clinical staff in the identification and management of inpatient aggression.     

多级计分测验中基于残差统计量的被试拟合研究

本文提出一种多级计分项目下的个人拟合统计量R, 考察它在检测6种常见的异常作答模式(作弊、猜测、随机、粗心、创新作答、混合异常)下的表现, 并与标准化对数似然统计量l_zp进行比较。结果表明：(1) 在异常作答覆盖率较低并且异常作答类型为作弊和猜测时, R的检测率显著高于l_zp; (2) 随着测验长度和被试异常程度的增加, 两种统计量的检测率都会上升; (3) 在一些条件下, R与l_zp检测效果接近。实证数据分析进一步展示了R统计量的使用方法和过程, 结果也表明R统计量具有较好的应用前景。     

Sequential dependencies in recall of sequences: Filling in the blanks

Sequential dependencies can provide valuable information about the processes supporting memory, particularly memory for serial order. Earlier analyses have suggested that anticipation errors—reporting items ahead of their correct position in the sequence—tend to be followed by recall of the displaced item, consistent with primacy gradient models of serial recall. However, a more recent analysis instead suggests that anticipation errors are followed by further anticipation errors, consistent with chaining models. We report analyses of 21 conditions from published serial recall data sets, in which we observed a systematic pattern whereby anticipations tended to be followed by the “filling in” of displaced items. We note that cases where a different pattern held tended to apply to recall of longer lists under serial learning conditions or to conditions where participants were free to skip over items. Although the different patterns that can be observed might imply a dissociation (e.g., between short- and long-term memory), we show that these different patterns are naturally predicted by Farrell’s (Psychological Review 119:223–271, 2012) model of short-term and episodic memory and relate to whether or not spontaneously formed groups of items can be skipped over during recall.     

Evaluating the Equivalence of an Employee Attitude Survey Across Languages,Cultures, and Administration Formats

Modern multinational organizations have found that testing or surveying their employees is difficult when the employees come from a variety of language backgrounds. In such situations, surveys and tests are often adapted for use across multiple languages. However, different language versions of an instrument are not necessarily equivalent, which may lead to misleading interpretations. In this study, we used weighted multidimensional scaling (MDS), analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), and ordinal logistic regression (LR) to evaluate the structural equivalence and differential item functioning (DIF) of an employee attitude survey from a large international corporation. Specifically, we evaluated the functioning of the survey items across 3 different languages, 8 different cultures, and 2 mediums of administration (paper-based and Web-based). MDS was used to evaluate structural equivalence, and ANCOVA and LR were used to evaluate DIF across selected employee groups and the 2 administration formats. The results indicated that the structure of the survey data was consistent and that the items functioned similarly across all groups. The results also illustrate the utility of MDS, ANCOVA, and LR for evaluating translated instruments. The implications of the results for future research in this area are discussed.