Item grouping and item randomization in personality measurement

This paper describes a study examining the impact of item order in personality measurement on reliability, measurement equivalence and scale-level correlations. A large sample of university students completed one of three forms of the International Personality Item Pool version of the Big Five personality inventory: items sorted at random, items sorted by factor, and items cycled through factors. Results showed that the underlying measurement model and the internal consistency of the IPIP-Big Five scale was unaffected by differences in item order. Also, most of the scale-level correlations among factors were not significantly different across forms. Implications for the administration of tests and interpretation of test scores are discussed, and future research directions are offered.     

Data Collection in a Flat World: The Strengths and Weaknesses of Mechanical Turk Samples

Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online labor system run by Amazon.com, provides quick, easy, and inexpensive access to online research participants. As use of MTurk has grown, so have questions from behavioral researchers about its participants, reliability, and low compensation. In this article, we review recent research about MTurk and compare MTurk participants with community and student samples on a set of personality dimensions and classic decision‐making biases. Across two studies, we find many similarities between MTurk participants and traditional samples, but we also find important differences. For instance, MTurk participants are less likely to pay attention to experimental materials, reducing statistical power. They are more likely to use the Internet to find answers, even with no incentive for correct responses. MTurk participants have attitudes about money that are different from a community sample's attitudes but similar to students' attitudes. Finally, MTurk participants are less extraverted and have lower self‐esteem than other participants, presenting challenges for some research domains. Despite these differences, MTurk participants produce reliable results consistent with standard decision‐making biases: they are present biased, risk‐averse for gains, risk‐seeking for losses, show delay/expedite asymmetries, and show the certainty effect—with almost no significant differences in effect sizes from other samples. We conclude that MTurk offers a highly valuable opportunity for data collection and recommend that researchers using MTurk (1) include screening questions that gauge attention and language comprehension; (2) avoid questions with factual answers; and (3) consider how individual differences in financial and social domains may influence results. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Psychometric evaluation and normative data for a Swedish version of the Patient Health Questionnaire 15‐Item Somatic Symptom Severity Scale

The lack of an available Swedish version of the Patient Health Questionnaire 15‐Item Somatic Symptom Severity Scale (PHQ‐15) motivated the present psychometric evaluation of such a version as well as providing normative data for the PHQ‐15. Data from 3,406 individuals who took part in the Västerbotten Environmental Health Study in Sweden were used. The respondents constitute a random sample, aged 18 to 79 years, stratified for age and sex. They responded to a Swedish translation of the PHQ‐15 as well as the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the Perceived Stress Scale, and the Shirom Melamed Burnout Questionnaire for assessment of convergent validity. The distribution of PHQ‐15 scores was positively skewed and mesokurtic in shape, and the internal consistency of the PHQ‐15 was satisfactory. Correlation coefficients between PHQ‐15 score and the measures of anxiety, depression, stress and mental/physical exhaustion indicate satisfactory validity. Normative data for PHQ‐15 scores as well as for categories of somatic symptom severity are provided. The favorable psychometric properties of the Swedish version of the PHQ‐15 suggest use of this instrument for quantification of somatization in Swedish and similar populations, and has the advantage of available normative data.     

You can't miss what you've never had: Can you?: The challenges and struggles of single parenthood from a psychoanalytic perspective

The issue of the growth of single-parent families has been in the forefront of political, social and moral debate in recent years. Children from single-parent families tend to be over-represented in clinic populations. Yet this state of My being may be no more potentially pathological than the nuclear family, which can become conceptually idealized The aim of this paper is to look behind the statistics and examine the impact on children of life in a single-parent family, to explore how this may be managed, and to look for potentiating factors which can enable good-enough development to unfold. Case material is used to illustrate the theme.     

Mirroring,imitation, identification: the sense of self in relation to the mother's internal world

The phenomenon of neonatal imitation, and the use of mutual imitation by mother and baby in the service of attunement, are considered in relation to psychoanalytic theories of mirroring, imitation and identification. Material from infant observation and from the treatment of two children on the autistic spectrum is discussed in terms of the suggestion that developmental imitation implies a perceived position of balance between the external baby and the mother's supposed internal occupant. This is seen as making possible introjective identification and assimilation, with the enrichment of the sense of identity, in contrast to the kind of imitation involving mimicry, in which adhesive or projective identification may be operative.     

A methodological note on ordered Q-Sort ratings

Patterns of ratings using the Q-Sort method and the Likert-type method are compared. Ordering effects are found in Q-Sort ratings that are not present in Likert-type ratings. Specifically, item order is related to both item variance and item placement, such that items appearing near the end of the Q-Sort have less variance and more central placement. This finding is verified across three measures in several datasets spanning nearly 20 years of research. Such item order effects appear to attenuate average absolute relationships (covariances and correlations) between items appearing near the end of the Q-Sort and other measures. Randomization of items may be (in some situations) a viable course of action to minimize these effects at a sample level.     

Social support and cardiovascular responding to laboratory stress: Moderating effects of gender role identification,sex, and type of support

The objective of the present study was to examine moderating effects of gender role identification, sex, and type of support on the buffering role of social support on cardiovascular responses. We hypothesized that (a) gender role identification, more than sex, would moderate the effect of social support and (b) to obtain optimal attenuating effects of social support, type of support provided should match type of support preferred in terms of one's gender role identification. That is, feminine participants would benefit more from relatively direct support, whereas masculine participants would benefit more from indirect support. Healthy participants (N = 100) performed a psychological stressor in the presence of a friend, after mental activation of a friend, or alone. Results revealed no moderating effects of gender role identification whether or not in combination with type of support. Nevertheless, results demonstrated an attenuating effect of mental support on heart rate and cardiac output in men. It is concluded that pathways linking social relationships and health may differ between women and men.     

Validity of the Rey Visual Design Learning Test in Primary and Secondary School Children

Studies on adults have revealed a disadvantageous effect of negative emotional stimuli on executive functions (EF), and it is suggested that this effect is amplified in children. The present study’s aim was to assess how emotional facial expressions affected working memory in 9- to 12-year-olds, using a working memory task with emotional facial expressions as stimuli. Additionally, we explored how degree of internalizing and externalizing symptoms in typically developing children was related to performance on the same task. Before employing the working memory task with emotional facial expressions as stimuli, an independent sample of 9- to 12-year-olds was asked to recognize the facial expressions intended to serve as stimuli for the working memory task and to rate the facial expressions on the degree to which the emotion was expressed and for arousal to obtain a baseline for how children during this age recognize and react to facial expressions. The first study revealed that children rated the facial expressions with similar intensity and arousal across age. When employing the working memory task with facial expressions, results revealed that negatively valenced expressions impaired working memory more than neutral and positively valenced expressions. The ability to successfully complete the working memory task increased between 9 to 12 years of age. Children’s total problems were associated with poorer performance on the working memory task with facial expressions. Results on the effect of emotion on working memory are discussed in light of recent models and empirical findings on how emotional information might interact and interfere with cognitive processes such as working memory.     

Cronbach's Alpha: Review of Limitations and Associated Recommendations

This paper discusses the limitations of Cronbach's alpha as a sole index of reliability, showing how Cronbach's alpha is analytically handicapped to capture important measurement errors and scale dimensionality, and how it is not invariant under variations of scale length, interitem correlation, and sample characteristics. In addition, the limitations and strengths of several recommendations on how to ameliorate these problems were critically reviewed. It was shown that the reliance on Cronbach's alpha as a sole index of reliability is no longer sufficiently warranted. This requires that other indices of internal consistency be reported along with alpha coefficient, and that when a scale is composed of large number of items, factor analysis should be performed, and appropriate internal consistency estimation method applied. This approach, if adopted, will largely minimize and guard against uncritical use of Cronbach's alpha coefficient.