Reliability and Validity of a Brief Clinician-Report Scale for Screening Behavioral Inhibition

Given the implications of behavioral inhibition (BI) on social anxiety and depression, several cost-effective methods have been developed to detect this trait. However, there is no instrument for obtaining a systematic measurement of BI that uses the reports of mental health professionals. The present study aims to explore the psychometric properties of the Behavioral Inhibition Observation System (BIOS), a brief tool enabling clinicians to provide a quick measure of BI. Parents and teachers of 361 preschool children provided measures of BI and psychopathology. Clinicians completed the BIOS after an individual meeting with every child. Seventy-four randomly selected children were exposed to standardized observation. Two researchers completed the BIOS after standardized observation. The results show that the BIOS is structured in one dimension that explains 60 % of the total variance. It shows good internal consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha?=?.88) and good test-retest reliability. The BIOS scores moderately converge with observational measures of BI and adequately distinguish constructs not related to BI (such as aggressiveness, disruptive behavior, or peer conflict). The results support that the BIOS, an 8-item scale that takes 3 min to complete, is valid and reliable for capturing a clinician’s measure of BI. The BIOS may help to detect temperamental disposition to social anxiety.     

Validity generalization: Some critical remarks on the Schmidt-Hunter procedure*

This article presents some critical comments on the validity generalization procedure which has been presented by Schmidt, Hunter and others. They have put forward a method for testing the hypothesis that the variance in validity coefficients across situations for job-test combinations is due to what they consider to be statistical artifacts. The Schmidt-Hunter approach is criticized on the following points: the compilation of validity data, the use of criterion measures, and the test of the hypothesis of no situational specificity. Further, the relation between the concepts ‘situational specificity’ and ‘validity generalization’ is considered. In addition, it is noted that Schmidt, Hunter and others have defined the concept ‘situation’ in a different way than classical writers. It is concluded that the Schmidt-Hunter approach to validity generalization shows fundamental shortcomings. As a consequence their far-reaching conclusions for the practice of personnel selection should be considered premature.     

In Search of the Creative Personality

Conceptual maps of occupational interests and environments, traits, and psychosocial motives were used in a search for general features of creative personality. Creative individuals seem to be concentrated in artistic and investigative occupations. In the samples surveyed, individuals in different arts and investigative fields differed considerably in personality traits, and the more creative did not differ from the less creative in the same ways across samples. The power motive generally may be important, but research to show this is lacking. Nevertheless, creative individuals were found to share strong symbolic interests, independence, and high aspirations. Viewing them as self-oriented rather than other-oriented is consistent with the above findings and with their love of work and difficulty in relationships; it points to transcendence of the self as a common moral problem. Implications for research on the creative personality include the importance of attention to the development of symbolic interests and to our projections of power on the creative individual.     

Unfolding the Measurement of the Creative Personality

Gough's Creative Personality Scale (CPS) is a self‐report personality inventory for creativity assessment. We investigated the undimensionality and the response process on the CPS from an ideal point (unfolding) perspective. The Graded Unfolding Model (GUM) was used to model binary responses and participants were 228 engineering students who completed a Greek version of the CPS. Results support the undimensionality of the CPS construct and suggest that unfolding measurement models may provide new insights to the assessment of creativity.     

A New Measure for the Assessment of Appreciation for Creative Personality

This article introduces a new scale for the assessment of Appreciation for Creative Personality (ACP). The ACP scale is a brief 13-item forced-choice measure that assesses interindividual differences in the preference for interacting with creative people. ACP is considered an important factor of creative climate at the level of interpersonal interaction. Individuals who score high on ACP are thought to foster a creative climate in that they value creative traits in others. In two studies, the psychometric characteristics of the ACP scale were probed. The scale showed a clear unidimensional structure with evidence of good reliability and convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity. The ACP was substantially related to Big Five openness to experience, but predicted relevant criteria over and above openness, supporting the conceptual distinction between ACP and openness. In dyadic data analyses, participants’ openness to experience was significantly associated with their parents’ ACP, which shows that the ACP scale captured shared interpersonal variance. Moreover, parental ACP indirectly predicted participants’ everyday creative activities via the path of openness. These findings suggest that the ACP scale is a useful tool for the study of social-environmental climate for creativity from an interpersonal perspective.     

Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale: Two Studies of Convergent Validity

As the field of mental health services shifts its focus to early intervention, the need to develop valid and reliable measures of young children's behavioral functioning is clear. Traditional assessment instruments have focused on deficits, problems, and pathologies to the exclusion of strengths and competencies. However, assessing child strengths provides parents, direct service providers, and educators with a more holistic view of the child's functioning and an understanding of skills from which individualized treatment and education plans may be written. The Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale (BERS; Epstein & Sharma, 1998) is a strength-based instrument designed to identify children's behavioral and emotional strengths. The psychometrics of the BERS has been demonstrated through several studies; however, the focus has mainly been on older age students. We sought to assess the convergent validity of the BERS with kindergarten children. The results of these two studies provide further support of the psychometric characteristics of the BERS and indicate its appropriateness with young children.     

Depression Following Traumatic Brain Injury: The Validity of the CES-D as a Brief Screening Device

The validity, reliability, and factor structure of the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D) was examined with 253 patients seen for neuropsychological evaluation following traumatic brain injury (TBI). All patients completed the CES-D; 31 also completed the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and 17 completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-II (MMPI-II). The CES-D demonstrated good concurrent, construct validity, significantly correlating with the BDI (r = .673, p < .0001) and the MMPI-II (Depression Scale T score r = .536, p = .027). The CES-D also demonstrated good internal consistency (coefficient alpha = .8195) and split-half reliability (Spearman–Brown r = .8284). Principal components factor analysis with varimax rotation resulted in a four-factor solution that accounted for 56.01% of the variance. The factor structure differed from the originally reported factor structure, and indicated that somatic difficulties were strongly associated with dysphoric affect in TBI patients. The CES-D is a valid and reliable screening instrument for use with TBI patients.     

Validity of the Personality Assessment Screener in Veterans Referred for Psychological Testing

Screening for psychopathology is desirable in many settings where routine administration of full assessment batteries is not practical or cost efficient. The Personality Assessment Screener (PAS) is a 22-item self-report subset of Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) items that was designed to screen for respondents who would be likely to achieve a clinically significant PAI profile. In this study, the PAS demonstrated classification rates in a sample of veterans referred for psychological evaluations that were similar to those described in initial validation studies. In addition, the three-item Negative Affect element of the PAS demonstrated impressive reliability and sensitivity given its brevity. These results support the use of the PAS as a screening tool to indicate clinically significant PAI profiles among veterans.     

The Creative Personality: A Synthesis and Development of the Creative Person Profile

Several constructs from the research literature on the creative personality were reoperationalized to gain further understanding of the structure of the creative personality and to develop a broad measure of relevant traits (CPP—the Creative Person Profile). From an initial pool of 38 creativity relevant personality constructs, 7 factors were identified and labeled (emotional instability, ambition, associative orientation, motivation, need for originality, agreeableness, and flexibility) in a sample of 481 participants with a mean age of 31.6 years. In a subsample, there were theoretically meaningful correlations between the 5-factor model of personality and 5 of the CPP factors. Moreover, most of the 7 components correlated with at least 1 ability test or self-report criterion of creativity (creative problem solving, remote associates test, ideational fluency, items from a creative activities checklist). Finally, in a discriminant validity study, scores on the 7 factors clearly differentiated between a group of professional artists (n = 69) and the remainder of the sample, and between a group of marketing students (n = 40) and the remainder of the sample.     

Emergent Issues in Assessing Personality Pathology: Illustrations from Two Studies of Adolescent Personality and Related Pathology

As illustrated by two articles that each investigate personality pathology and its correlates in adolescents—Aelterman et al. (2010) on obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) from a dimensional personality perspective, and Barry and Wallace (2010) on indicators of pathological and normative development of youth narcissism—this commentary discusses four important assessment issues that have become more salient as the field considers a shift, through proposed changes in the DSM, to an approach that incorporates trait dimensions as an important aspect of diagnosis: (1) the importance of using multiple information sources for valid personality/ PD assessment; (2) relations of personality traits to (mal)adaptivity in general and also with regard to (3) trait uni- versus bi-polarity; and (4) whether personality types have incremental predictive value beyond their component personality traits and related pathology. The article also discusses why research on childhood and adolescent personality/ PD is important in addressing these issues.     

Construct Validity Evidence for the Intercultural Readiness Check against the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire

The psychometric qualities of the intercultural readiness check (IRC) were evaluated against an existing instrument for multicultural effectiveness: the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire (MPQ). The IRC has scales for intercultural sensitivity, intercultural communication, intercultural relationship building, conflict management, leadership and tolerance of ambiguity. A sample of in majority employees who were trained for an international position (N=137) participated in the study. The IRC scales were moderately to sufficiently reliable. Correlations with the MPQ scales were in the expected direction. Both instruments were equally strongly related to international inspiration, with open‐mindedness (MPQ) and intercultural sensitivity (IRC) as most important predictors. The IRC scales explained more variance in international experience.