Two-Component Solutions of Repertory Grid Data: A Comparison of Three Methods

Abstract

Of the various ways in which repertory grid data can be summarized, the two-component plot has been the most popular method. These plots are derived in three main ways: (1) Slater's (1977) INGR1D program, (2) subprogram FACTOR in the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) (Nie, Hull, Jenkins, Steinbrenner, & Brent, 1975), and (3) Higgenbotham and Bannister's (1983) CAB program, little attempt has been made to compare the solutions produced by these programs despite widespread use. A small number of single case studies suggest that the solutions are comparable. This paper reports a study that compares the solutions derived from INGRID, SPSS, and CAB for a series of cases. The results show that correspondence was good for the first components, but for the second components the results were less satisfactory     

Computing the real solutions of Fleishman's equations for simulating non-normal data

Fleishman's power method is frequently used to simulate non-normal data with a desired skewness and kurtosis. Fleishman's method requires solving a system of nonlinear equations to find the third-order polynomial weights that transform a standard normal variable into a non-normal variable with desired moments. Most users of the power method seem unaware that Fleishman's equations have multiple solutions for typical combinations of skewness and kurtosis. Furthermore, researchers lack a simple method for exploring the multiple solutions of Fleishman's equations, so most applications only consider a single solution. In this paper, we propose novel methods for finding all real-valued solutions of Fleishman's equations. Additionally, we characterize the solutions in terms of differences in higher order moments. Our theoretical analysis of the power method reveals that there typically exists two solutions of Fleishman's equations that have noteworthy differences in higher order moments. Using simulated examples, we demonstrate that these differences can have remarkable effects on the shape of the non-normal distribution, as well as the sampling distributions of statistics calculated from the data. Some considerations for choosing a solution are discussed, and some recommendations for improved reporting standards are provided.     

Employment and Roles of Counselors in Employee Assistance Programs

The authors studied employment and roles of master's-level counselors in employee assistance programs (EAPs) and the services offered by different types of EAP organizations. The study focused on programs, workshops and seminars: assessment; counseling; consultation; and evaluation and marketing services offered by EAPs. Master's-level counselors were found to be similar to those with Master's of Social Work (MSW) degrees in employment rate and percentage of EAP staff. Both groups were the most frequently employed and constitute the greatest percentage of the professional mental health staff in EAPs. Also, counselors were found to be involved in all of the service areas studied within each type of EAP. Differences in counselors' roles among EAP types are discussed.     

An Examination Of Some Factors Related To Using Different Minkowski Models In Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling

Great interest in non-metric multidimensional scaling has resulted in a number of computer programs to derive solutions. This study examined the effect upon stress of data generated under five metrics and recovered under all five metrics. MDSCAL-5M. TORSCA-9, and POLYCON-II were used to analyse these data. POLYCON-II was the most accurate, although none of the programs was highly successful. In most cases recovery with the Euclidian metric provided, if not the best, very close to the best recovery regardless of the true metric. This study also raised the question of the advisability of using different metric models in nonmetric multidimensional scaling and found that even very different Minkowski metrics are quite similar in the way they rank order dissimilarities.     

Low-Income Preschoolers' False-Belief Performance

A group of 72 preschoolers (36 African Americans, 36 European Americans) enrolled in Head Start programs and other preschools serving low-income children were asked 3 variations of false-belief questions across 3 scenarios and given a language and cognition subtest. Children's performance varied across the questions and tasks, but after covarying for children's language and cognitive scores, those effects were no longer found to be significant. Age effects were still significant even after differences in children's language and cognitive abilities had been accounted for. Although no language and cognitive differences were found among European Americans and African Americans, the European Americans still outperformed African Americans on 1 of the task scenarios. Those results demonstrate (a) the importance of considering testing procedures and language and cognitive abilities when assessing children's social cognitive skills and (b) that age-related changes in false-belief understanding are associated with social cognitive conceptual changes that are independent of language and cognitive skills.     

Building Institutions for the Next 50 Years of Creativity Research

The Journal of Creative Behavior 's remarkable half‐century is a good occasion for reflecting on the role of a scholarly field's institutions in fostering creative work. In creativity studies, some of our institutions are flourishing, particularly our many excellent peer‐reviewed journals. But we face some institutional challenges that will require some creative solutions from creativity researchers. This article considers three challenges: (a) how to train and place the next generation of scholars when so few creativity researchers work at doctoral‐level graduate programs; (b) how to tighten the field's social network by bringing together people from different subfields and career stages in face‐to‐face gatherings; and (c) how to identify and develop the leadership needed to manage our scholarly organizations.     

Assessment of mothers' concerns about infants,toddlers, and preschoolers

Only recently has determining the child-rearing concerns of parents been considered an important research objective. Existing efforts have, for the most part, either employed small sample sizes or surveyed parents already in the process of seeking help or advice. It was, therefore, felt that additional, more representative data were needed. In the present study, 583 mothers with children aged 59 months or younger were surveyed regarding their concerns about their children's development. On the „Specific Needs Assessment Report”︁ (SNAR) (copyright © 1975, by Karl F. Riem, J. Jeffrey Crisco, and Kathy Willms), mothers rated their concerns for 60 developmental-behavioral items about their children's health, attending skills, problem behaviors, communication skills, motor skills, cognitive skills, self-help skills, and social skills. Mothers were most frequently concerned to a moderate or major degree about at least one item of the problem behavior category. For this category, parent-child management, crying-whining, and temper tantrums were the individual items of greatest concern. Mothers of girls more frequently indicated health concerns than mothers of boys. These results support those of previous investigations, which suggested the need for parent education programs to help parents manage their children.     

Inducing a blockmodel structure of two-mode binary data using seriation procedures

We show that seriation of the rows and columns of a two-mode, binary matrix can be an effective method for producing a reordering of the matrix that reveals a blockmodel structure of the data. The objective criterion of the seriation process is based on Robinson patterning of matrix elements. The key advantages of the proposed method are: (a) it can be used in conjunction with existing two-mode blockmodeling algorithms by facilitating selection of the number of classes for the rows and columns of the matrix and the appropriate types of ideal blocks; (b) the model uses a well-grounded index based on Robinson structure, (c) guaranteed optimal solutions can be obtained for problems of practical size, and (d) the seriation method is frequently capable of producing a solution that has a substantive interpretation with respect to the orderings of the row objects and column items.     

Personal Theories of Hunger and Eating1

Recent research on hunger and eating has shown that (a) among individuals with adlibitum access to food, hunger and eating are not regulated by deviations in the body's energy resources from set-points, and (b) it is healthier for people to consume their daily caloric intake as several small snacks than as 3 large meals. People's beliefs about hunger and eating were assessed in 2 questionnaire studies. In Study 1, a large sample of undergraduates was surveyed; in Study 2, dietetics students, nursing students, medical students, dietitians, nurses, and doctors were surveyed. Both studies revealed that people's personal theories of hunger and eating were inconsistent with research findings in ways that could promote overconsumption. These results suggest that educational programs designed to modify the beliefs about hunger and eating of people suffering from problems of overconsumption and of health professionals who treat problems of overconsumption may increase the effectiveness of current treatment regimens.     

Sample size determinations for Welch's test in one‐way heteroscedastic ANOVA

For one‐way fixed effects ANOVA, it is well known that the conventional F test of the equality of means is not robust to unequal variances, and numerous methods have been proposed for dealing with heteroscedasticity. On the basis of extensive empirical evidence of Type I error control and power performance, Welch's procedure is frequently recommended as the major alternative to the ANOVA F test under variance heterogeneity. To enhance its practical usefulness, this paper considers an important aspect of Welch's method in determining the sample size necessary to achieve a given power. Simulation studies are conducted to compare two approximate power functions of Welch's test for their accuracy in sample size calculations over a wide variety of model configurations with heteroscedastic structures. The numerical investigations show that Levy's (1978a) approach is clearly more accurate than the formula of Luh and Guo (2011) for the range of model specifications considered here. Accordingly, computer programs are provided to implement the technique recommended by Levy for power calculation and sample size determination within the context of the one‐way heteroscedastic ANOVA model.     

Predicting consistent psychological test item responses: A comparison of models

The efficacy of four models for predicting the stability of a given individual's test item responses on a structured inventory was examined. Two models were based on item characteristics alone and predicted that an individual would be most likely to change responses to items with moderate endorsement probabilities, or with moderate social desirability scale values. Two other prediction models incorporated individual differences in the perception of item characteristics by predicting that unstable items would have relatively long response latencies for an individual, or would be near an individual's threshold for responding desirably to items. Results from two studies yielded support for the following conclusions: (a) a person's test item responses are relatively stable over short time intervals; (b) items to which a person will show response changes on retest can be identified to a statistically significant degree; (c) the models based on response latencies constituted in both studies a significantly better predictor than the other models examined. The implications of these results for the threshold model were discussed as were the practical and theoretical applications of the response latency-item stability relationship at the level of an individual's test protocol.     

Multidimensional Unfolding by Nonmetric Multidimensional Scaling of Spearman Distances in the Extended Permutation Polytope

A multidimensional unfolding technique that is not prone to degenerate solutions and is based on multidimensional scaling of a complete data matrix is proposed: distance information about the unfolding data and about the distances both among judges and among objects is included in the complete matrix. The latter information is derived from the permutation polytope supplemented with the objects, called the preference sphere. In this sphere, distances are measured that are closely related to Spearman's rank correlation and that are comparable among each other so that an unconditional approach is reasonable. In two simulation studies, it is shown that the proposed technique leads to acceptable recovery of given preference structures. A major practical advantage of this unfolding technique is its relatively easy implementation in existing software for multidimensional scaling.     

Navigating Complex Implementation Contexts: Overcoming Barriers and Achieving Outcomes in a National Initiative to Scale Out Housing First in Canada

The scaling out of Housing First (HF) programs was examined in six Canadian communities, in which a multi‐component HF training and technical assistance (TTA) was provided. Three research questions were addressed: (a) What were the outcomes of the TTA in terms of the development of new, sustained, or enhanced programs, and fidelity to the HF model? (b) How did the TTA contribute to implementation and fidelity? and (c) What contextual factors facilitated or challenged implementation and fidelity? A total of 14 new HF programs were created, and nine HF programs were sustained or enhanced. Fidelity assessments for 10 HF programs revealed an average score of 3.3/4, which compares favorably with other HF programs during early implementation. The TTA influenced fidelity by addressing misconceptions about the model, encouraging team‐based practice, and facilitating case‐based dialogue on site specific implementation challenges. The findings were discussed in terms of the importance of TTA for enhancing the capacities of the HF service delivery system—practitioners, teams, and communities—while respecting complex community contexts, including differences in policy climate across sites. Policy climate surrounding accessibility of housing subsidies, and use of Assertive Community Treatment teams (vs. Intensive Case Management) were two key implementation issues.     

Spirituality in the Counselor Education Curriculum: A National Survey of Student Perceptions

Interns (N= 335) from 36 programs accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs completed a survey about their preparation to integrate the 9 Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Issues in Counseling (ASERVIC) Spiritual Competencies into their counseling practice. Most respondents felt prepared to integrate all but 1 of ASERVIC's competencies. Spiritual topics of wellness, meaning, hope, and faith were addressed most frequently in course work and were associated with feeling prepared to integrate 8 of the competencies. Classroom discussion, experiential activities, and reading were the modalities most useful for learning about spirituality.     

A statistical approach to Saaty's scaling method for priorities

This paper investigates the logarithmic least squares (LLSM) approach to Saaty's (Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1977, 5, 234–281) scaling method for priorities in hierarchical structures. It is argued that statistical criteria are important in deciding the scaling method controversy. It is shown that LLSM is statistically optimal under a number of realistic and practical models. Variances and covariances of parameter estimates are derived. The covariance matrix associated with overall priority differences is also developed. These results allow for a significance analysis of apparent priority differences.     

Role of clarity of other's feelings for dyadic coping

Dyadic coping has repeatedly been associated with positive outcomes in intimate relationships. However, less is known about the prospective predictors of dyadic coping. This study investigates clarity of other's feelings (CoF) as a potential predictor of supportive dyadic coping in a longitudinal study. In a sample of 368 couples, self‐reported CoF and supportive dyadic coping perceived by the partner were assessed annually over 3 years. Results revealed that interpersonal differences in men and women's CoF are positively associated with interpersonal differences in supportive dyadic coping. Moreover, interpersonal differences in men's CoF predicted long‐term intrapersonal changes in supportive dyadic coping of both partners. Couple intervention programs might strengthen couple's dyadic coping skills by targeting men's understanding of their partner's feelings.     

Automated Simultaneous Assembly for Multistage Testing

This article offers some solutions used in the assembly of the computerized Uniform Certified Public Accountancy (CPA) licensing examination as practical alternatives for operational programs producing large numbers of forms. The Uniform CPA examination was offered as an adaptive multistage test (MST) beginning in April of 2004. Examples of automated assembly using mixed integer programming (MIP) solutions in Optimization Programming Language software (OPL Studio 3.6.1©, ILOG Inc., Gentilly, France) illustrate MST design features and implementation strategies that can be generalized to other testing programs. This article affords a compromise between the best possible combination of test content and sustainability and security over time by linear programming techniques that make use of mixed integer optimization algorithms. Relative optimization functions are formulated to ensure a variety of constraints are always met for "testlets" of differing difficulties to form panels for the MST design. Technical information is discussed to assist other practitioners and researchers with test assembly optimization problems. Some practical consequences from the selection of statistical targets on testlet exposure are illustrated. These results are described with respect to the fundamental principles of automated test assembly and continuous administration based on MST when testlet or item exposure and inventory rotation are critical concerns.