The users of an online psychological advice service: a sociodemographic analysis

Although online psychological services and research based on them are increasing rapidly, it is not that easy to find investigations that focus on the kind of people that demand them. To know their profile could help to improve the online psychological services that are offered to them. For this purpose, we analysed the sociodemographic characteristics of 1052 participants, all of them having posed a psychological question to our online advice service. The relations between sociodemographics and variables related to the psychological consultation are analysed herein. Features such as age distribution, a high proportion of long-term problems, the large quantity of questions from Latin America, or the under representation of the lowest socioeconomic and educational levels could lead to clinical, social and legal implications that we comment on in this work.     

Distress in response to emotional and sexual infidelity: evidence of evolved gender differences in Spanish students

The authors studied gender differences in response to hypothetical infidelity in Spanish students. Using a forced-choice methodology, the authors asked a sample of 266 participants to indicate which kind of infidelity would be more distressing: emotional or sexual. Men were significantly more distressed by sexual infidelity than were women, and women were significantly more distressed by emotional infidelity than were men. Results supported the hypothesis that particular infidelity types, which resemble adaptive problems that human beings faced in the past, contribute to the psychology of jealousy. The results are consistent with previous cross-cultural research.     

Further examination of measurement properties of Spanish version of the Sexual Desire Inventory with undergraduates and adolescent students

The factor structure and construct validity of a Spanish version of Spector, Carey, and Steinberg's Sexual Desire Inventory was examined with structural equation modelling and a nonclinical sample (N = 608). Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that Dyadic and Solitary sexual desire scales measured two factorially distinct constructs. Their internal consistency reliabilities were .87 and .88, respectively. Structural equation analysis indicated that both subscales are distinguishable from similarly conceptualized correlates of sexual desire: the Impersonal subscale of the Sex Fantasy Questionnaire and the Erotophilia measure of the Sexual Opinion Survey. However, the data raised some questions about an empirical distinction between dyadic sexual desire and intimate sexual fantasy.     

Reliability and validity of the Spanish version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescent (MMPI-A)

The aim of this study was to determine the test-retest reliability and internal consistency of the scales of the Spanish version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescent (MMPI-A; Butcher et al., 1992). Two samples of 939 and 109 Spanish adolescents ages 14 to 18 years were assessed with the MMPI-A in their school environment. The first sample responded to the inventory once, whereas the second sample responded to it on 2 occasions with a 2-week interval between sessions. Results showed no significant differences in means or variances between the first and the second test administration for most MMPI-A scales. Test-retest reliability ranged between .62 (Amorality, Ma(1)) and .92 (Immaturity, IMM); most correlations exceeded .70. Internal consistency values for the MMPI-A scales in the pretest and posttest were very similar overall. External validity of the MMPI-A was demonstrated through several significant correlations between its scales and YSR/11-18 syndromes and social interaction measures. The highest correlations were established between the Anxious/Depressed YSR/11-18 scale and other MMPI-A scales such as Schizophrenia (Sc), Welsh's Anxiety (A), Adolescent-Anxiety (A-anx) and Adolescent-Alienation (A-aln), and between the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale and the MMPI-A Adolescent-Social Discomfort (A-sod) scale.     

Comorbidity of specific and generalized social anxiety in Spanish adolescents

The comorbidity of the social anxiety disorder, including the specific and generalized subtypes, and other psychopathological problems in adolescents is explored. For this purpose, 961 Spanish young people were evaluated (mean age = 15.63 years) by means of various self-reports that measure sociodemographical variables, competences and clinical indexes. Those with social anxiety were divided into two groups: specific and generalized. The results indicated that the adolescents with social anxiety had a higher percentage of comorbidity in the indexes that refer to anxiety and avoidance in social situations, than did the young people with other psychopathologies. The group of generalized social anxiety had a higher percentage of comorbidity than the specific social anxiety group in the majority of the clinical problems measured by the YSR/11-18 and MMPI-A. Only in eleven of the evaluated clinical indexes was the difference in comorbidity between the two groups of social anxiety significant, and the percentage of comorbidity was lower in the first group.