The Five Factor Model in personnel selection: Measurement equivalence between applicant and non-applicant groups

This study investigates the measurement equivalence of a Five Factor measure of personality between applicant and non-applicant samples. The Big Five Questionnaire-2 was administered in two samples: A group of volunteers (n = 903), who completed the test for research purposes, and a group applying for jobs, who completed the test during hiring procedures (n = 401). Multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis on item composites was conducted to test for the equivalence of factor covariance and mean structures of twenty facets of the Five Factors. Item-level analyses were carried out through analysis of variance to further examine the issue of measurement invariance. Findings suggested that personality facets have the same measurement unit across applicants and non-applicants, while a lack of equivalence was found in the origin of the scales. Similar results were found at the item-level. Implications for personality assessment are advanced and discussed.     

Effect of design factors on drivers’ understanding of variable message signs locating traffic events

BackgroundThis article addresses how to combine three elements (a pictogram, an arrow, a city) in a variable message sign (VMS) to locate temporary events (e.g., “congestion before Milan”). We adopted the G1c stack model as a design template, an Advanced Directional Sign (ADS) recommended by the 1968 Convention to locate cities, which can be easily adapted to modern VMS. However, as most of the VMS in operation are not full-matrix, we have also adapted this design to more restrictive display conditions. This adaptation critically concerned the arrow function on the message that either points up broadly (generically, as in G1c) or connects with the city more specifically (explicit). Although G1c reads top-down like a verbal text, previous studies indicated drivers’ preference for bottom-up landmark order in VMS, so both ordering criteria were compared in the present study.MethodsThe experiment involved 99 people (70 drivers and 29 drivers in training). Participants were informed that they would see various VMS reporting certain events (e.g., congestion) related to one of four cities along the road. Their task was to identify the event location (before, after the city) after seeing blocks of two consecutive messages (first a complementary message, then the target message), limiting their response to the content of the second message. Three design-focused factors were tested: typographical alignment (left or centre), landmark order (bottom-up or top-down), and arrow function (explicit or generic). The rate of correct location answers was the dependent variable.ResultsResults revealed that comprehension varied greatly depending on the arrow’s function and the placing of elements. In the explicit-arrow messages, comprehension was good both in the Top-down and Bottom-up conditions, but in the generic-arrow messages, only in the Bottom-up condition was comprehension good. Likewise, understanding was better in the Before condition than in the After condition in all combinations of Landmark order and Arrow function conditions. In general, left alignment of the central column elements of the VMS improved comprehension respective to centred alignment. Finally, the complementary message factor had an effect under certain circumstances.Practical implicationsThe messages displaying a generic arrow (following the G1c model) were better understood when the landmarks were ordered bottom-up, not top-down. In addition, explicit-arrow messages were better understood per se (in the absence of a complementary message) than generic-arrow messages. Overall, this work suggests that improving our understanding of how thought processes and design features relate to each other can contribute to safer driving nationally and internationally.     

新世纪20年国内结构方程模型方法研究与模型发展

新世纪前20年, 国内结构方程模型(SEM)方法研究主要涉及5个主题：模型发展、参数估计、模型评价、测量不变性及特殊数据处理, 特别是模型发展方面(即SEM的各种变式)有较多成果。对每个主题, 在简述背景知识的基础上, 系统总结了方法学研究发展及成果。最后也讨论了SEM的国外方法学研究进展和未来研究方向。     

Measurement invariance tests of the Impression Management sub-scale of the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding

The Impression Management (IM) subscale of the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (Paulhus, 1988) has been used as a proxy for common method variance in anonymous settings and as a cause of faking on personality testing in confidential settings. This study uses confirmatory factor analysis to conduct measurement invariance/equivalence tests (also known as multiple group analysis) on the IM subscale in a quasi-experiment in anonymous and confidential data collection settings. Using Brown’s (2006) bottom-up approach to Cheung and Rensvold’s (1999) model testing steps and Cheung and Rensvold’s (2002) statistical tests, the IM sub-scale was determined to have equal form, equal factor loadings, equal indicator error variances, equal factor variance, and an equal factor covariance in both 1-factor and 2-factor models in both data collection settings. Mean scale scores were significantly higher in the confidential group than in the anonymous group. These results suggest that using the IM sub-scale as a cause of faking and as a proxy for common method variance (CMV) is likely to be acceptable because the psychometric properties of the instrument are invariant across testing conditions.     

Guidelines Versus Practices in Cross-Lingual Assessment: A Disconcerting Disconnect

The International Test Commission's Guidelines for Translating and Adapting Tests (2010) provide important guidance on developing and evaluating tests for use across languages. These guidelines are widely applauded, but the degree to which they are followed in practice is unknown. The objective of this study was to perform a systematic review of published articles to determine whether the methodologies related to test adaptation and evaluation of cross-lingual measurement bias have improved since the initial publication of the Guidelines. Results demonstrated that although reporting reliability estimates and statistically analyzing construct equivalence improved since publication of the Guidelines, the majority of test development and validation practices in the published literature have not embraced the recommendations put forth by the International Test Commission. Overall, these findings call into question many of the inferences derived from cross-linguistic comparisons and clearly signal a need for better dissemination mechanisms of the Guidelines.     

Products of modal logics and tensor products of modal algebras

One of natural combinations of Kripke complete modal logics is the product, an operation that has been extensively investigated over the last 15 years. In this paper we consider its analogue for arbitrary modal logics: to this end, we use product-like constructions on general frames and modal algebras. This operation was first introduced by Y. Hasimoto in 2000; however, his paper remained unnoticed until recently. In the present paper we quote some important Hasimoto's results, and reconstruct the product operation in an algebraic setting: the Boolean part of the resulting modal algebra is exactly the tensor product of original algebras (regarded as Boolean rings). Also, we propose a filtration technique for Kripke models based on tensor products and obtain some decidability results.     

The Friends and Family Interview: Measurement invariance across Belgium and Romania

The Friends and Family Interview (FFI; Steele & Steele, 2005 Steele, H. and Steele, M. 2005. The construct of coherence as an indicator of attachment security in middle childhood: The Friends and Family Interview, New York, NY: Guilford Press.  [Google Scholar]), a semi-structured interview assessing attachment representations, is used in the context of an international research project. In the current study, the first step in the validation process of the FFI was to check whether this instrument measures coherence in the same way across countries. Coherence in attachment narratives is a central marker of secure and organized attachment representations in childhood and adulthood. Analysis were conducted on the data from Belgian (n = 35) and Romanian (n = 43) adopted adolescents and revealed that the FFI coherence is similar across the two samples. Correlations between coherence and attachment categories were also computed, confirming the relation between both these variables. Empirical implications of these analyses on the FFI are discussed.     

Achievement Emotions Questionnaire-Mathematics (AEQ-M) in adolescents: Factorial structure,measurement invariance and convergent validity with personality

ABSTRACT

The Achievement Emotions Questionnaire-Mathematics (AEQ-M) is a self-report measure of emotions experienced in class, when self-studying, and during tests for the domain of mathematics. Our aim was to present a Portuguese version of this instrument for use with adolescents and to test its reliability, factorial structure, measurement invariance, and construct validity with personality dimensions. Our sample comprised 1,387 Portuguese students from the 7th, 8th and 9th grades (mean age = 13.2 years). Student responses to the AEQ-M were found to be reliable. Confirmatory factor analysis validated a seven-emotion × three-setting factorial structure. This model demonstrated measurement invariance across gender and grade. As a demonstration of construct validity, the emotions measured by the AEQ-M showed a pattern of associations with psychobiological personality dimensions that were in line with theoretical predictions. These results validate the AEQ-M as a suitable instrument for assessing adolescents’ mathematics-related achievement emotions and their associations with personality.     

Categorization behaviour in adults,adolescents, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder adolescents: A comparative investigation

Although significant progress has been made with respect to our understanding of categorization and concept learning behaviour in adults, much less is known about how this key capacity plays out with respect to more restrictive populations. This is unfortunate because much may be revealed about the nature of concept learning by examining the limits exhibited by special populations. With this tenet in mind, in what follows, we investigated key aspects of concept learning in terms of the unexplored comparative performance of three populations—adults, adolescents, and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). To do so, we employed a novel parainformative experimental task involving categorical stimuli with four objects defined over three dimensions. The learning difficulty ordering for these types of three-dimensional stimuli has proven robust and has been replicated by several researchers. Indeed, in our experiment, we observed the same concept learning ordering in adults and adolescents, but not in ADHD adolescents: For example, the latter group showed greatly impaired categorization performance on stimuli characterized by an “exclusive-or” rule. However, categorization performance on such type of stimuli indicated good reliability in discriminating between adolescents with and without ADHD (receiver-operating characteristic, ROC?=?.82). We accurately predicted and accounted for these results using generalized invariance structure theory (GIST; Vigo, 2013. The GIST of concepts. Cognition, 129, 138–162), which posits that organisms detect invariance patterns in stimuli that are necessary precursors to concept formation.