Reliability and validity of the Basic Depression Questionnaire

Background/ObjectiveDepressive disorders have a high prevalence around the world. They present a great comorbidity with other disorders like anxiety, thereby making a differential diagnosis very difficult. The Basic Depression Questionnaire was designed to palliate this issue by isolating specific depression symptoms. Our aim is to study the reliability, factorial structure, and differential item functioning of this questionnaire. Method: The sample consisted of 1,397 adults without psychological problems (M_age = 29.76, SD = 11.25, 64.78% women) who completed the CBD. Results: We observed that none of the items presented differential functioning. A monofactorial structure was established. In this model a good fit was obtained by confirmatory factor analysis and a strict invariance by sex. The ordinal alpha was used to check the reliability and it fetched an index of .95. Conclusions: The Basic Depression Questionnaire has adequate psychometric properties. The absence of differential item functioning and the invariance by sex are guarantees of an adequate use to diagnose depression for men and women. So, its clinical use can help to differentiate between the specific diagnoses for depressive disorders and anxiety disorders.     

Syntactic and semantic processes in aphasic deficits: The availability of prepositions

The availability of a specific category of closed class items (prepositions) was examined in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia. The role of prepositions was varied (syntactic/semantic) in two tasks: one requiring production of prepositions and the other acceptability judgments. Overall, it was easier to perform the acceptability task than to produce the target item. In the judgment task, Wernicke's aphasics more accurately determined the acceptability of prepositions in their syntactic role than in their semantic role, but Broca's aphasics showed no such difference. In the production task, Wernicke's aphasics again were more likely to produce prepositions which were in a primarily syntactic role. Broca's aphasics, however, failed to produce such syntactically based prepositions. The results suggest that the availability of a given closed class vocabulary form is not merely a function of its class membership but also of its functional role, and this fact serves to distinguish aspects of Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics' deficit.     

Can emotional bonding be a liability? Status striving as an intervening mechanism in affective commitment and negative work behaviors relationship

IntroductionThe dark side of affective commitment has been ignored in the past literature on organizational commitment.ObjectivesUsing the tenants of moral self-licensing theory, we examined how affective commitment can cause negative outcomes. We hypothesized that affective commitment leads to unethical pro-organizational behaviors, careerism and counter-productive work behaviors through increased urge for status striving.Methods and resultsA multi-wave and two-source data was obtained (n = 306) from employees and their peers working in the service sector of Pakistan. Employing structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis our results indicate that high levels of affective commitment might unleash status striving which further creates unethical pro-organizational behaviors, careerism and CWBs.ConclusionThe current study opens up a new side in the affective commitment literature by examining status striving as an underlying mechanism through which affective commitment reveals its deleterious consequences for employees.