Elaboration et validation de tests de jugement situationnel comme outil de sélection professionnelle : guide méthodologique

Current views in personnel selection recognize the necessity for situational judgements tests (SJT) which are closed to the real work context of companies. The SJTs have also become a popular selection tool across Europe. SJTs are attractive because they show good validity, positive applicants reactions and can be cost effective to test large group of applicants at once. The aim of this paper is to describe a structured methodology for the elaboration of such test. Each stage is illustrated by examples and psychometrics validation issues are discussed.     

Psychometric properties and concurrent validity of two exercise addiction measures: A population wide study

ObjectivesThe existence of exercise addiction has been examined in numerous studies. However, none of the measures developed for exercise addiction assessment have been validated on representative samples. Furthermore, estimates of exercise addiction prevalence in the general population are not available. The objective of the present study was to validate the Exercise Addiction Inventory (EAI; Terry, Szabo, & Griffiths, 2004), and the Exercise Dependence Scale (EDS; Hausenblas & Downs, 2002b), and to estimate the prevalence of exercise addiction in general population.DesignExercise addiction was assessed within the framework of the National Survey on Addiction Problems in Hungary (NSAPH), a national representative study for the population aged 18–64 years (N = 2710).Method474 people in the sample (57% males; mean age 33.2 years) who reported to exercise at least once a week were asked to complete the two questionnaires (EAI, EDS).ResultsConfirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) indicated good fit both in the case of EAI (CFI = 0.971; TLI = 0.952; RMSEA = 0.052) and EDS (CFI = 0.938; TLI = 0.922; RMSEA = 0.049); and confirmed the factor structure of the two scales. The correlation between the two measures was high (r = 0.79). Results showed that 6.2% (EDS) and 10.1% (EAI) of the population were characterized as nondependent-symptomatic exercisers, while the proportion of the at-risk exercisers were 0.3% and 0.5%, respectively.ConclusionsBoth EAI and EDS proved to be a reliable assessment tool for exercise addiction, a phenomenon that is present in the 0.3–0.5% of the adult general population.     

Electrodermal responses to sources of dual-task interference

There is a response selection bottleneck that is responsible for dual-task interference. How the response selection bottleneck operates was addressed in three dual-task experiments. The overlap between two tasks (as indexed by the stimulus onset asynchrony [SOA]) was systematically manipulated, and both reaction time and electrodermal activity were measured. In addition, each experiment also manipulated some aspect of the difficulty of either task. Both increasing task overlap by reducing SOA and increasing the difficulty of either task lengthened reaction times. Electrodermal response was strongly affected by task difficulty but was only weakly affected by SOA, and in a different manner from reaction time. A fourth experiment found that the subjectively perceived difficulty of a dual-task trial was affected both by task difficulty and by SOA, but in different ways than electrodermal activity. Overall, the results were not consistent with a response selection bottleneck that involves processes of voluntary, executive attention. Instead, the results converge with findings from neural network modeling to suggest that the delay of one task while another is being processed reflects the operation of a routing mechanism that can process only one stream of information for action at a time and of a passive, structural store that temporarily holds information for the delayed task. The results suggest that conventional blocked or event-related neuroimaging designs may be inadequate to identify the mechanism of operation of the response selection bottleneck.     

The role and importance of interpretation in the talking cure

Starting with an exploration of how the concept of interpretation in analytical treatment has evolved, the author goes on to discuss the role and importance of interpretation in the changes that psychoanalysis brings about. Although interpretation is looked upon as the key element in psychoanalytic activity, the fact that it is subsumed within the transference raises questions as to its influence in the analytical domain. After discussing the foundations of interpretation with respect to the theory of psychoanalytic treatment and examining Strachey’s views on this, the author defines the conditions and constraints surrounding interpretation and preparatory interventions in order to outline the essential nature of the interpretative process as seen against the wider background of the analyst’s activity as manifested through speech. This leads to a discussion of the relative influence of insight and suggestion in bringing about therapeutic change. The author draws the conclusion that interpretation works as a metaphor in lifting repression.     

Future of Psychometrics: Ask What Psychometrics Can Do for Psychology

I address two issues that were inspired by my work on the Dutch Committee on Tests and Testing (COTAN). The first issue is the understanding of problems test constructors and researchers using tests have of psychometric knowledge. I argue that this understanding is important for a field, like psychometrics, for which the dissemination of psychometric knowledge among test constructors and researchers in general is highly important. The second issue concerns the identification of psychometric research topics that are relevant for test constructors and test users but in my view do not receive enough attention in psychometrics. I discuss the influence of test length on decision quality in personnel selection and quality of difference scores in therapy assessment, and theory development in test construction and validity research. I also briefly mention the issue of whether particular attributes are continuous or discrete.     

Complexity Results of STIT Fragments

We provide a Kripke semantics for a STIT logic with the ??next?? operator. As the atemporal group STIT is undecidable and unaxiomatizable, we are interested in strict fragments of atemporal group STIT. First we prove that the satisfiability problem of a formula of the fragment made up of individual coalitions plus the grand coalition is also NEXPTIME-complete. We then generalize this result to a fragment where coalitions are in a given lattice. We also prove that if we restrict the language to nested coalitions the satisfiability problem is NP-complete if the number of agents is fixed and PSPACEcomplete if the number of agents is variable. Finally we embed individual STIT with the ??next?? operator into a fragment of atemporal group STIT.     

Generalizing parametric models by introducing trial-by-trial parameter variability: The case of TVA

We identify two biases in the traditional use of Bundesen’s Theory of Visual Attention (TVA) and show that they can be substantially reduced by introducing trial-by-trial variability in the model. We analyze whole and partial report data from a comprehensive empirical study with 347 participants and elaborate on Bayesian model selection theory for quantifying the advantage of trial-by-trial generalization in general. The analysis provides strong evidence of trial-by-trial variation in both the VSTM capacity parameter and perceptual threshold parameter of TVA. On average, the VSTM capacity bias was found to be at least half an item, while the perceptual threshold parameter was found to be underestimated by about 2 ms.     

Psychopathic Traits of Dutch Adolescents in Residential Care: Identifying Subgroups

The present study examined whether a sample of 214 (52.8% male, M age = 15.76, SD = 1.29) institutionalized adolescents could be classified into subgroups based on psychopathic traits. Confirmatory Factor Analyses revealed a relationship between the subscales of the Youth Psychopathic traits Inventory (YPI) and the three latent constructs of the original model on which it is based. Latent Class Analyses showed that adolescents showing psychopathic traits could be classified into three subgroups. The first group showed low scores on the grandiose/manipulative dimension, the callous/unemotional dimension, and the impulsive/irresponsible dimension (normal group). The second group scored moderate on the grandiose/manipulative dimension and the callous/unemotional dimension and high on the impulsive/irresponsible dimension (impulsive, non-psychopathic-like group). The third group scored high on all three dimensions (psychopathy-like group). The findings revealed that the impulsive, non-psychopathic like group scored significantly higher on internalizing problem behavior compared to the normal group, while the psychopathy-like and the impulsive, non-psychopathic-like group both scored higher on externalizing problem behavior compared to the normal group. Based on a self-report delinquency measure, it appeared that the psychopathy-like group had the highest delinquency rates, except for vandalism. Both the impulsive and psychopathy-like group had the highest scores on the use of soft drugs.     

The Combined Contribution of Fear and Perceived Danger of COVID-19 and Metacognitions to Anxiety Levels during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy - Despite a wide base of research suggesting a major role for dysfunctional metacognitions in contributing to anxiety, their role in...     

A Basic Bivariate Structure of Personality Attributes Evident Across Nine Languages

Here, two studies seek to characterize a parsimonious common‐denominator personality structure with optimal cross‐cultural replicability. Personality differences are observed in all human populations and cultures, but lexicons for personality attributes contain so many distinctions that parsimony is lacking. Models stipulating the most important attributes have been formulated by experts or by empirical studies drawing on experience in a very limited range of cultures. Factor analyses of personality lexicons of nine languages of diverse provenance (Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Turkish, Greek, Polish, Hungarian, Maasai, and Senoufo) were examined, and their common structure was compared to that of several prominent models in psychology. A parsimonious bivariate model showed evidence of substantial convergence and ubiquity across cultures. Analyses involving key markers of these dimensions in English indicate that they are broad dimensions involving the overlapping content of the interpersonal circumplex, models of communion and agency, and morality/warmth and competence. These “Big Two” dimensions—Social Self‐Regulation and Dynamism—provide a common‐denominator model involving the two most crucial axes of personality variation, ubiquitous across cultures. The Big Two might serve as an umbrella model serving to link diverse theoretical models and associated research literatures.