Confirmatory factor analysis of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire

Worry is often assessed with the 16-item Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ; Meyer, Miller, Metzger, & Borkovec, 1990. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 28, 487-495), but the factor structure of the PSWQ is not well articulated. Three factor analyses of the PSWQ have been conducted, with two (Brown, Antony, & Barlow, 1992. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 30, 33-37; van Rijsoort, Emmelkamp, & Vervaeke, 1999) retaining a unifactorial solution and one (St?ber, 1995) retaining a two-factor solution. We sought to determine the relative strengths of these solutions. Seven hundred eighty-eight undergraduates completed the PSWQ and measures of depression and anxiety. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the two-factor solution provided a better fit to the data. There was also evidence for a higher order worry factor. Multiple regression analyses revealed that factor 1 (Worry Engagement) explained the majority of the variance in the symptom measures. The higher order worry factor also accounted for variance in some measures. Compared to the PSWQ total score, Worry Engagement demonstrated slightly higher internal consistency and significantly stronger correlations with most measures of depression and anxiety. Factor 2 (Absence of Worry) demonstrated moderate negative correlations with Worry Engagement and the PSWQ Total Score but only modest correlations with depression and anxiety.     

Perceptions of stress and stress interventions in finance organizations: Overcoming resistance towards counselling

This paper presents the findings from a qualitative study conducted to gain further insight into the attitudes of finance organizations towards workplace stress and stress interventions. Semi-structured interviews were used and seven individuals, each representing their organization, participated in the study. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) (Smith, J., Jaraman, M., & Osborn, M. 1999 Smith J Jaraman M Osborn M 1999 Doing interpretative phenomenological analysis In M. Murray & K. Chamberlain (Eds) Qualitative Health Psychology London Sage [Crossref] [Google Scholar] was used to analyse the data. In M. Murray & K. Chamberlain (Eds), Qualitative Health Psychology. London: Sage.) was used to analyse the data. One main theme that emerged was “resistance towards counselling for stress”. This theme and several related sub-themes are discussed, and suggestions to reduce resistance to counselling for stress are presented in a model.     

Effects of multilingualism on Australian infants’ language environments in early childhood education centers

This study investigates differences in the language environments experienced by multilingual and monolingual infants in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. The Language Environment Analysis (LENA) technology was used to collect day-long audio-recordings from 181 one-year-old infants (age range from 12 to 21 months). We examined whether infants’ multilingual status predicts the amount of educators’ language input (adult word count, AWC), child vocalizations (CVC) and conversational turns (CTC), as well as interaction effects on AWC, CVC and CTC of infants’ multilingual status and other infant, home and ECEC characteristics. Multilevel mixed effects models revealed no main effect of infants’ multilingual status on the language environment outcome variables. Instead, infant gender significantly predicted adult word count, with female infants hearing more words from educators than male infants. There was a significant interaction effect between the infants’ multilingual status and both their age and length of time in an ECEC setting on child vocalizations. While monolingual infants produced more vocalizations as their age increased, multilingual infants did not show this increase in vocalizations with age. Further, the difference between monolingual and multilingual children’s vocalizations decreased as the length of time in ECEC increased. There were no significant predictors of conversational turns. Findings from this study suggest that early childhood educators do not adjust their talk according to the multilingual status of the infants. However, multilingual infants do not increase their vocalizations as their age increases to the same extent as do their monolingual peers. The interaction effect between multilingualism and the length of ECEC attendance also implies that ECEC environments may be particularly beneficial for supporting multilingual infants’ vocalizations. This study highlights the need to provide pedagogical support to educators to help them to encourage multilingual infants’ vocalizations in ECEC settings.     

Assessing the factor structure of the Behaviour of Young Novice Drivers Scale (BYNDS)

The Behaviour of Young Novice Drivers Scale (BYNDS) is a self-report instrument to assess risky driving behaviours among youth population. Although previous studies have offered evidences of reliability and validity for the BYNDS scores, results are not conclusive as regards its factor structure. The aim of this research was to assess the factor structure of the BYNDS via Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA). The BYNDS was administered to a sample of 832 drivers aged from 18 to 25 years (Argentina = 270, Colombia = 350, and Mexico = 212). Six models were examined: three derived from previous literature, one emerged from an exploratory factor analysis, a unidimensional model, and a bifactor model. Results showed that none of the models analysed offered a completely acceptable fit to the data. However, the original model hypothesizing five orthogonal factors showed the best fit indices, with all of the items loading onto the associated factor. Results of the bifactor analysis suggested that three of the subscales (transient violations, fixed violations, and misjudgements) share a strong common basis and their scores would not offer much information above and beyond the total score. On the contrary, the items in the subscale of risk-exposure are clearly influenced by a specific domain factor, contributing to the multidimensionality of the BYNDS. In line with previous studies, males scored higher than females in driving violations, fixed violations, and risk-exposure. This study contributes to the psychometric refinement of a novel measure of risky driving in youth population. This self-report could be a valuable tool in the evaluation of road safety performance.     

Goodness, Values, Reasons

Contemporary value theory has been characterized by a renewed interest in the analysis of concepts like “good” or “valuable”, the most prominent pattern of analysis in recent years being the socalled buck-passing or fitting-attitude analysis which reduces goodness to a matter of having properties that provide reasons for pro-attitudes. Here I argue that such analyses are best understood as metaphysical rather than linguistic and that while the buck-passing analysis has some virtues, it still fails to provide a suitably wide-ranging pattern of analysis for conceptualizing evaluative properties. Instead, a better alternative can be found in a metaphysical version of the Geachean view that goodness is always attributive and never predicative, namely that goodness is always a matter of relative placement in certain kinds of comparison classes. It is then suggested that the good and the valuable need to be separated from each other and that the latter is a species of the former.     

A cross-cultural validation of stage development: A Rasch re-analysis of longitudinal socio-moral reasoning data

Kohlberg's characterization of moral development as displaying an invariant hierarchical order of structurally consistent stages is losing ground. However, by applying Rasch analysis, Dawson recently gave new interpretation and support to his characterization of stage development. Using Rasch models, we replicated and strengthened her findings in a re-analysis of three sets of longitudinal socio-moral reasoning data collected in Iceland. A new application of Rasch analysis provided support for upward development. Our results supported Kohlberg's characterization of stage development and the cross-cultural stability of Dawson's findings that were exclusively based on US samples. We conclude that proposals to replace Kohlberg's characterization of moral development are premature.     

Adjusting researchers’ approach to adjustment: On the use of covariates when testing interactions

A common design in social psychology involves the use of two independent variables, an experimental manipulation and a measured individual difference, and the interest is in the interaction between them. In such designs, there are often obvious covariate(s), correlated with the measured independent variable, which the researcher wishes to control. Typically this is done by including the covariate in the analytic model. We show that in most cases this is an inadequate model. In general, the interaction between the two independent variables will be estimated without bias only when the interaction between the covariate and the manipulated independent variable is included in the analysis. We present simulations showing the factors affecting the magnitude of the bias and provide a survey of recent social psychological literature illustrating the frequency of the problem. Finally, we discuss cases where both independent variables are manipulated and the covariate is a potential mediator.     

Dangerous sports and recreational drug‐use: rationalizing and contextualizing risk

This article reports upon the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) of a small number of semi‐structured interviews, conducted with persons engaging in either recreational drug‐use (primarily identified here as Ecstasy‐users) or dangerous sports (primarily identified here as bungee‐jumpers). Our analysis focuses upon the manner in which these participants make sense of their initiation and maintenance experiences, and the means by which they understand and make sense of risk. In particular, we draw attention to the distinctions between our participants' rational and contextual reconstructions of risky decisions. These distinctions indicate that our participants are able to draw upon a complex cultural and relational understanding of risk and pleasure, and are thus able to deal quite effectively with the contradictory experience of taking ‘non‐volitional’ action. This exploration of persons' strategies for displacing agency in relation to potentially negative outcomes may have implications for research and practice in related areas. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.