Measuring Associative Strength: Category-Item Associations and Their Activation from Memory

Three measures of the strength of association between a category and members of the category were investigated: (a) a naming measure, in which the participants (93 undergraduates) were asked to list the members of a category and the listing order was assumed to reflect associative strength; (b) a latency measure, which assessed the latency to correctly identify specific items as members or nonmembers of a given category; and (c) a facilitation measure, in which the spontaneous activation of an item upon presentation of a category label as a prime was assessed by considering the extent to which the prime facilitated recognition of an initially degraded (visually obscured) item. The three measures correlated substantially, thus validating the naming and latency measures as reasonable approximations of the likelihood that a given item will receive activation in memory when the category is presented. Many of the constructs of interest to survey researchers can be viewed similarly as associations in memory, and the naming and latency measures can be fruitfully used in surveys; research attesting to the utility of namingand latency data is reviewed.     

The process of responding to personality items: Inconsistent responses to repeated presentation of identical items

A promising approach to understanding the processes involved when subjects respond to personality items is provided by the investigation of the causes of inconsistent responses when subjects answer the same item on two occasions. Among these causes are the properties of the item. Previous item research focused almost exclusively on properties which are not highly specific to the item, such as endorsement rate (ER) and social desirability scale value (SDSV). Although past studies found that items with ‘extreme’ SDSVs and/or ERs elicit fewer inconsistencies, these studies ignored more item-specific properties such as item content and item ambiguity. The present study demonstrates that contrary results regarding consistency may be obtained when more item-specific properties are taken into consideration. These results are interpreted as evidence that certain kinds of item content can increase the indecision and conflict that characterize some subjects' response processes.     

Development and Validation of the Short Grit Scale (Grit–S)

Two experiments investigated the possibility that external statements in the Rotter I-E scale are more depressing in tone than internal statements, and thus depressed subjects may respond to external items due to item mood level rather than locus of control content. Results of Experiment 1 revealed that the external alternative was rated as more depressing than its internal counterpart for the majority Of the 23 I-E items (18 for females and 15 for males), while a small number of I-E items (3 for females and 6 for males) contained internal and external statements rated as balanced for depressing Content. For two I-E items the internal alternative was rated as more depressing. Results of Experiment 2 revealed that endorsement of external items was significantly related to self-reported depression for both total I-E score and for the item subset where external statements(as revealed in Experiment 1) were the more depressing of the item pair. External endorsement was not significantly related to depression for the I-E item subset where options are balanced for mood level, while endorsement of internal statements was related to depression only for the item subset where the internal option was rated as more depressing. These results were interpreted as supporting prior research which demonstrated mood response set using altered Rotter I-E scale items, Implications for use of the Rotter I-E scale in the study of depression were discussed.     

The differential responding of male prisoners to subtle and obvious MCMI subscales.

We investigated the differential responding of 100 male inmates to subtle and obvious MCMI scale items; subtlety was determined by judgments by college students. It has been predicted that item subtlety would be positively correlated with item endorsement. This prediction was supported across all 175 MCMI items, as well as across items on 7 of 8 personality and 8 of 12 clinical scales. It had also been predicted that education and intelligence would moderate the relationship between subtlety and endorsement, with inmates higher in education and intelligence demonstrating a greater tendency than other inmates to avoid obvious items. Modest support was obtained for this prediction, with statistically significant results found for 4 personality and 5 clinical scales. The significance of the subtle-obvious distinction is discussed, especially when employing the MCMI with an inmate population.     

The Differential Responding of Male Prisoners to Subtle and Obvious MCMI Subscales

We investigated the differential responding of 100 male inmates to subtle and obvious MCMI scale items; subtlety was determined by judgments by college students. It has been predicted that item subtlety would be positively correlated with item endorsement. This prediction was supported across all 175 MCMI items. as well as across items on 7 of 8 personality and 8 of 12 clinical scales. It had also been predicted that education and intelligence would moderate the relationship between subtlety and endorsement, with inmates higher in education and intelligence demonstrating a greater tendency than other inmates to avoid obvious items. Modest support was obtained for this prediction, with statistically significant results found for 4 personality and 5 clinical scales. The significance of the subtle-obvious distinction is discussed, especially when employing the MCMI with an inmate population.     

A CONCEPTUAL AND EMPIRICAL REEXAMINATION OF THE MEASUREMENT OF THE SOCIAL DESIRABILITY OF ITEMS: IMPLICATIONS FOR DETECTING DESIRABLE RESPONSE STYLE AND SCALE DEVELOPMENT

This paper calls into question traditional methods of measuring the social desirability of items and their use in scale construction. First, we make explicit that the proper focus for desirability studies of items and traits are the rated desirabilities of the alternative item responses indicating different trait levels. Second, the results from our first study show that the relation between degree of endorsement of an item and its judged desirability level is often nonlinear and varies across items such that no general model of item desirability can be adopted that will accurately represent the relations across all items, traits, and trait levels. In addition, the nature of these relationships can vary depending on whether desirability is considered in a work or general context. Third, results from a second study indicate specifically that people when instructed to self-present in a maximally desirable manner will choose for some attributes a moderate level of endorsement (e.g., "agree") rather than a more extreme response option (e.g., "strongly agree"). Subjects offer several different reasons for viewing the less extreme response options, which yield more moderate trait level scores, as more desirable. These reasons are linked to perceptions of the more extreme response option as being associated with negative behaviors and concerns about how others will view a more extreme response to the item. Both studies indicate that desirable responding to personality items is more complex than previously believed.     

Modality, concreteness, and set-size effects in a free reconstruction of order task

Would informing subjects which items were presented on the current list remove effects of presentation modality, concreteness, and set size in a long-term free reconstruction of order task? In Experiment 1, a typical modality effect was found: memory for the final item in a list was enhanced when the item was presented auditorily rather than visually. In Experiment 2, order memory was better for concrete than for abstract items. And in Experiment 3, order memory was better when the same six items were presented on every trial than when a unique set of six items was presented. In all conditions in all experiments, the to-be-remembered items were given to the subject at test. These results suggest that contrary to a popular assumption, the reconstruction of order task does not provide a functionally pure measure of order memory     

Which factors influence number updating in working memory? The effects of size distance and suppression

Updating information in working memory is a critical process which makes possible to have available, at every moment, the information most relevant for mind operations. However, the specific mechanisms underlying the updating process have rarely been analysed. This paper examines the importance of two of the mechanisms implicated in a numerical updating task: item comparison and item substitution. The item comparison mechanism was studied by manipulating the size distance between items. The item substitution mechanism was investigated by increasing/decreasing the number of updates within trials. Furthermore, in order to examine the effects of time constraints, presentation rate was manipulated. Over three experiments, the results obtained highlighted that updating performance is mainly influenced by suppression request, even when the presentation rate is self‐paced. However, errors depend on the distance between items. The implications of the results for the understanding of updating are discussed.     

A DIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS OF MMPI ITEMS

A method of analysis specifically designed for binary data was applied to 100 MMPI items. Sixty, items were carefully chosen to represent the nine major clinical scales with respect to direction of keying, social desirability scale value and endorsement frequency. The remaining 40 items were randomly chosen from items not appearing on any of these scales. Although a complete solution was obtained in five dimensions, only three were retained. The three dimensions were related to scale membership, gender of the respondent and various item characteristics. The results clearly support the two major MMPI factors obtained on a scale level and additionally show a strong gender dimension.     

Congruency effect of presentation modality on false recognition of haptic and visual objects

Studying a list of items related to an item that is not presented (lure item) produces a false memory. We investigated whether a haptic study/test results in false recognition and, if so, whether congruency of presentation modality between study and test reduces the false recognition. After haptic or visual study of lists of real objects that are related to a lure object, participants were asked to recognise whether the objects were presented haptically or visually. We obtained false recognition results with haptic study and/or test. False recognition was reduced when presentation and study modalities were congruent. After haptic study, false recognition was reduced in the haptic test, as compared to the visual test. In contrast, visual study always reduced visual false recognition. These results indicate that there is a general effect of retrieval cues that will reduce false recognition.     

Stuck in the Middle: The Use and Interpretation of Mid-Points in Items on Questionnaires

Likert-type scales are commonly used when assessing attitudes, personality characteristics, and other psychological variables. This study examined the effect of varying the number of response options on the same set of 28 attitudinal items. Participants answered items using either a 4-point scale (forced choice), a 5-point scale that included a “neither” mid-point, or a 4-point scale with an option of “no opinion” presented after the item. The questionnaire also included an item asking participants what they believe the midpoint in a scale indicated. As predicted, participants’ interpretations of the midpoint varied widely with the most common responses being: “no opinion,” “don't care,” “unsure,” “neutral,” “equal/both,” and “neither.” The quantitative results showed that participants’ levels of item endorsement varied based on the response options offered. For example, “neither” was chosen more often than “no opinion” on all of the items.     

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN RESPONSE STABILITY AND ITEM ENDORSEMENT,SOCIAL DESIRABILITY,AND AMBIGUITY IN THE MMPI AND THE CPI

Relationships between two indices of response stability and item endorsement, social desirability, and seven ambiguity indices were investigated separately within the MMPI, the unique items of the CPI, and two subpools moderate in endorsement and social desirability. Within the two original pools, zero-order correlations and multiple regression analyses revealed that only extremeness of endorsement and social desirability were substantially related to response stability; within the moderate subpools, however, indices of ambiguity-especially item length and ratings of global ambiguity, behavioral reference, and estimated stability-accounted for important degrees of variance individually as well as in combination. Reasons for the moderating effects of endorsement and social desirability are discussed, as are the implications for scale construction.     

Predicting the Completion of an Integrative and Intensive Outpatient Chronic Pain Treatment With the Personality Assessment Inventory

The X-zero distinction has been used as the operational definition of MMPI item subtlety in previous research. A consistent finding has been that the X items, which are obvious in terms of pathological content, can be faked whereas the more subtle zero items cannot be faked. The present study examined the relationship between instructional sets and endorsement patterns, using a more refined, comprehensive measure of item subtlety. Sixty (30 male, 30 female) subjects completed two MMPI protocols, one under a standard instructional set and the other under either a fake-good or fake-bad response set. Order of administration and sex were counterbalanced. In general, the findings for the subtle-obvious dimension paralleled the previous findings with the X-zero distinction. Endorsement of obvious items was a direct function of instructional set, whereas endorsement of subtle items was inversely related to instructional set. Because subtle items did not appear to measure the constructs for which they had been originally intended, other uses for subtle items were discussed.     

Introducing Emotioncy as a Potential Source of Test Bias: A Mixed Rasch Modeling Study

This article attempts to present emotioncy as a potential source of test bias to inform the analysis of test item performance. Emotioncy is defined as a hierarchy, ranging from exvolvement (auditory, visual, and kinesthetic) to involvement (inner and arch), to emphasize the emotions evoked by the senses. This study hypothesizes that when individuals have high levels of emotioncy for specific words, their test performance may systematically change, resulting in test bias. To this end, 355 individuals were asked to take a 40-item vocabulary test along with the emotioncy scale. Mixed Rasch model was employed to flag differential item functioning items. Results illustrated that the test takers with high emotioncy toward specific words outperformed the ones in the low-emotioncy group, characterizing emotioncy as a potential source of test bias.     

A bias interpretation of facilitation in perceptual identification

In a typical perceptual identification task, a word is presented for a few milliseconds and masked; then subjects are asked to report the word. It has been found that an earlier presentation of the test word will improve identification of the test word by as much as 30%. In addition, this facilitation has been shown to be preserved under amnesia. In this article we examine a fundamental question: Is the facilitation the result of bias toward the earlier presented item, an improvement in perceptual sensitivity, or both? The experiments presented here use a forced choice procedure to show that prior presentation of an item biases the subject to choose that item but does not improve discriminability. This result is obtained when the distractor items are visually similar to the target items. When distractors are dissimilar, earlier presentation affects neither bias nor discriminability. Two models of word identification are examined in light of the bias effects, and implications for understanding savings in amnesia are also examined.     

ISSUES AND STRATEGIES FOR REDUCING THE LENGTH OF SELF-REPORT SCALES

Greater understanding of the complex interrelationships among work-relevant constructs has increased the number of constructs on organizational surveys. Good psychometric practice also dictates the use of multiple items per construct. The net result has been longer surveys. Longer surveys take more time to complete, tend to have more missing data, and have higher refusal rates than short surveys. Arguably, then, techniques for reducing the length of scales while maintaining psychometric quality are worthwhile. Little guidance exists on how to reduce the length of a multi-item scale and we argue that the most common technique, maximizing internal consistency, is problematic and should be avoided. We present a set of item "quality indices" to help conceptualize the competing issues that influence item retention decisions. Statistical analysis of an example case using these indices suggested that there are 3 key aspects of item quality to consider when reducing a scale. We describe strategies that can assist scale developers in using these 3 aspects of item quality when making scale reduction decisions.     

Using a small sample Q sort to identify item groups

A small sample of 40 second-year university students in Hong Kong were asked to perform a Q sort on the 36 items of a questionnaire used to assess six dimensions of student approaches to learning, the Learning Process Questionnaire. Participants were instructed to sort the items into as many groups as they liked with the only conditions being that all items within a group be as similar as possible in perceived meaning and that no item be placed into more than one group. By treating participants' responses as a form of multiple-choice data and by applying optimal scaling, three solutions were obtained. A two-dimensional plot of the optimal item scores for the first two solutions yielded 10 clearly defined item clusters suggesting a possible ten-factor model as opposed to the six-factor model found in studies of this questionnaire. The implications of using this approach to identify potential competing factor models, especially within a cross-cultural context, are discussed.     

Bayesian Estimation for Item Factor Analysis Models with Sparse Categorical Indicators

Psychometric models for item-level data are broadly useful in psychology. A recurring issue for estimating item factor analysis (IFA) models is low-item endorsement (item sparseness), due to limited sample sizes or extreme items such as rare symptoms or behaviors. In this paper, I demonstrate that under conditions characterized by sparseness, currently available estimation methods, including maximum likelihood (ML), are likely to fail to converge or lead to extreme estimates and low empirical power. Bayesian estimation incorporating prior information is a promising alternative to ML estimation for IFA models with item sparseness. In this article, I use a simulation study to demonstrate that Bayesian estimation incorporating general prior information improves parameter estimate stability, overall variability in estimates, and power for IFA models with sparse, categorical indicators. Importantly, the priors proposed here can be generally applied to many research contexts in psychology, and they do not impact results compared to ML when indicators are not sparse. I then apply this method to examine the relationship between suicide ideation and insomnia in a sample of first-year college students. This provides an important alternative for researchers who may need to model items with sparse endorsement.