Factor structure of the FACES-III in Japanese university students

We performed a confirmatory factor analysis for the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scale (FACES-III) using 3865 university students in Japan. We confirmed two factors as in the original version, but there were slight differences with the original one. Some items were deleted in order to obtain sufficient goodness-of-fit indexes in a series of confirmatory factor analyses. Moreover, items 11 "Our family, changes its way of handling tasks," 20 "Parents and children discuss in our family," and 15 "We shift household responsibilities," which were originally categorized as "adaptability" items, were loaded on the "cohesion" factor.     

Effects and Limitations of Prosodic and Semantic Biases on Syntactic Disambiguation

This paper examined the effects of prosody on the syntactic ambiguity resolution of Japanese sentences, especially with reference to the interaction with semantic bias. Syntactically ambiguous sentences with different types of semantic bias were constructed. The degree of bias in each sentence was evaluated through visual presentation experiments. Three types of sentences were selected based on the results of visual presentation experiments, were recorded with prosody maximally favoring each possible interpretation of the sentences, and were used as the stimuli for the auditory presentation experiments. The results showed that prosodic cues can influence the interpretation of a sentence even when the sentence is strongly semantically biased. The results also showed a limitation to prosodic cues. The prosodic biases alone were not sufficient to fully determine the interpretation of the sentences even when the sentences were neutrally biased semantically.     

Housing First and Photovoice: Transforming Lives,Communities, and Systems

This article presents findings from a community‐based participatory evaluation of a Housing First program on the Island of O'ahu. In this study, clients in a Housing First program used Photovoice to evaluate the program and to advocate for progressive housing policies. Written together by members of the Housing First Photovoice group, this collaborative article describes the outcomes from both the Housing First program and the Photovoice project and demonstrates the ways in which participatory program evaluations can interact with client‐driven programs like Housing First to produce a cumulative, transformative impact. Findings suggest that community psychologists hoping to re‐engage with community mental health systems through enacting transformative change should consider taking a community‐based participatory approach to program evaluation because increased client voice in community mental health programs and their evaluations can have far‐reaching, transformative impacts for research, practice, and policy.     

Ryff's psychological well-being inventory: factorial structure and life history correlates among Japanese university students

The theoretical model of psychological well-being that encompasses six domains (self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth) was tested with a Japanese university student population (N = 574) using a Japanese translation of Ryff's 1989 Psychological Well-being Inventory. A factor structure similar to Ryff's original model emerged. Both depression and anxiety correlated only moderately with scores on some subscales of the inventory, suggesting the relative independence of these dimensions of psychological well-being and negative affectivity. With negative affectivity controlled, some early life experiences were significantly linked with psychological well-being: relationships with romantic partners were linked with greater autonomy and experiences which enhance self-esteem were liked with greater personal growth. Careful psychometric work on the Japanese version is required to use the scale; then a replication and extension of the present study would be feasible.     

Self‐Construal Scales Lack Validity

Self‐construal is thought to mediate and explain the effects of culture on a wide variety of outcome variables. A meta‐analysis of published cross‐cultural self‐construal research is reported in this article, and the results across studies suggests that the evidence for the predicted cultural differences is weak, inconsistent, or nonexistent. The results of 3 priming experiments (N = 121, N = 99, and N = 361) suggest that (a) priming does not account for the inconsistent results observed in the meta‐analysis, (b) that scores on a self‐construal scale appear to be measuring trait‐like constructs that are not sensitive to priming, and (c) that measures of self‐construals lack convergent validity. The results of several measurement studies (N = 121, 223, 230, 323, 214, 206, 126, 204, 148, 141, and 150) were inconsistent with the a priori two‐factor measurement model in every case. Self‐construal scales were found to be radically multidimensional and highly unstable within and across cultures. These results lead us to conclude that catastrophic validity problems exist in research involving the use of self‐construal scales in cross‐cultural research.     

A Multimethod Multitrait Validity Assessment of Self‐Construal in Japan,Korea, and the United States

A large number of previous studies have used self‐construal to predict communication outcomes. Recent evidence, however, suggests that validity problems may exist in self‐construal measurement. The current study conducted a multimethod multitrait (Campbell & Fiske, 1959) validation study of self‐construal measures with data (total N= 578) collected in Korea (N= 200), Japan (N= 212), and the U.S. (N= 166). The data showed that the Singelis (1994) Self‐Construal Scale, the Cross, Bacon, and Morris (2000) Relational Interdependent Self‐Construal Scale (RISC), and the Kuhn and McPartland (1954) Twenty Statements Test (TST) lacked convergent and discriminant validity, both pan‐culturally and within each of the three countries included in the study. Scores on the TST were not significantly related to scores on the self‐construal scales, and the various self‐construal measures correlated more highly with measures of communication directness than with alternative measures of the same type of self‐construal. Substantial method effects were also observed. The results were tested for both 2‐ and 3‐dimensional models of self‐construal and for refined scales and scales with all items retained. The results of all analyses were inconsistent with the claim that self‐construal measures are construct valid.