Network approaches to psychometric constructs, in which constructs are modeled in terms of interactions between their constituent factors, have rapidly gained popularity in psychology. Applications ...of such network approaches to various psychological constructs have recently moved from a descriptive stance, in which the goal is to estimate the network structure that pertains to a construct, to a more comparative stance, in which the goal is to compare network structures across populations. However, the statistical tools to do so are lacking. In this article, we present the network comparison test (NCT), which uses resampling-based permutation testing to compare network structures from two independent, cross-sectional data sets on invariance of (a) network structure, (b) edge (connection) strength, and (c) global strength. Performance of NCT is evaluated in simulations that show NCT to perform well in various circumstances for all three tests: The Type I error rate is close to the nominal significance level, and power proves sufficiently high if sample size and difference between networks are substantial. We illustrate NCT by comparing depression symptom networks of males and females. Possible extensions of NCT are discussed.
Translational AbstractThe network approach, in which psychological constructs are modeled in terms of interactions between their constituent factors, have rapidly gained popularity in psychology. Applications of such network approaches to various psychological constructs have recently moved from a descriptive stance, in which the goal is to estimate the network structure, to a more comparative stance, in which the goal is to compare network structures across groups. However, the statistical tools to do so are lacking. In this article, we present the network comparison test (NCT). NCT is a statistical test that compares two network structures on three types of characteristics. Performance of NCT is evaluated by means of a simulation study. Simulated data shows that NCT performs well in various circumstances for all three tests: when the groups are simulated to be similar, the error rate (i.e., NCT indicating that they are different, while the simulated networks are similar) is adequately low, and when the groups are simulated to be different, the ability to detect a difference is sufficiently high when the difference between simulated networks and the sample size are substantial. We illustrate NCT by comparing depression symptom networks of males and females. Possible extensions of NCT are discussed.
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2.
Single Item Measures in Psychological Science Allen, Mark S.; Iliescu, Dragos; Greiff, Samuel
European journal of psychological assessment : official organ of the European Association of Psychological Assessment,
2022, Volume:
38, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Single-item measures have a bad reputation. For a long time, adopting single-item measures was considered one of the surest methods of receiving a letter of rejection from journal editors (Wanous et ...al., 1997). As one research team noted, “it is virtually impossible to get a journal article accepted ... unless it includes multiple-item measures of the main constructs” (Bergkvist & Rossiter, 2007, p. 175). However, a series of articles published in the late 1990s and 2000s began to challenge the conventional view that single-item measures are an unsound approach to measuring cognitive and affective outcomes (Bergkvist & Rossiter, 2007; Fuchs & Diamantopoulos, 2009; Jordan & Turner, 2008; Loo, 2002; Nagy, 2002; Wanous et al., 1997). These articles did much to alleviate the stigma surrounding single-item measures, but even today, many researchers remain unconvinced that single-item measures can provide valid and reliable assessments of important psychological phenomena. Of course, there are many instances in which single-item measures would be a poor choice – for example, in research aiming to capture the breadth of human personality or emotion. However, when a construct is unambiguous or narrow in scope, the use of single items can be appropriate and should not necessarily be considered unsound (Wanous et al., 1997). The last few decades have seen a marked increase in the use of large national-level panel data in psychological research. Given the considerable volume of data and the diversity of constructs included in these panel surveys, it is often necessary to measure psychological constructs using just a few or even only one item. For example, the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (HILDA; Watson & Wooden, 2021) assesses body weight satisfaction using the single item “How satisfied are you with your current weight?” with response categories of 1 (= very satisfied), 2 (= satisfied), 3 (= neither satisfied nor dissatisfied), 4 (= dissatisfied), and 5 (= very dissatisfied). Although there are multi-item measures of body satisfaction available, on face value, there is no reason to think that this single item does not adequately capture a person’s general satisfaction with their body weight. The increasing use of large panel surveys in psychological research means that now more than ever, it is essential to ensure that single-item measures are valid and reliable. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
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3.
An Ultra-Short Measure for Work Engagement Schaufeli, Wilmar B; Shimazu, Akihito; Hakanen, Jari ...
European journal of psychological assessment : official organ of the European Association of Psychological Assessment,
2019, Volume:
35, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The current study introduces an ultra-short, 3-item
version of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale. Using five national samples from
Finland (N = 22,117), Japan
(N = 1,968), the Netherlands
...(N = 38,278), Belgium/Flanders
(N = 5,062), and Spain
(N = 10,040) its internal consistency and
factorial validity vis-à-vis validated measures of burnout, workaholism,
and job boredom are demonstrated. Moreover, the UWES-3 shares 86-92% of
its variance with the longer nine-item version and the pattern of correlations
of both versions with 9 indicators of well-being, 8 job demands, 10 job
resources, and 6 outcomes is highly similar with an average, absolute difference
between correlations of only .02. Hence, it is concluded that the UWES-3 is a
reliable and valid indicator of work engagement that can be used as an
alternative to the longer version, for instance in national and international
epidemiological surveys on employee's working conditions.
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Three studies were conducted to develop and validate the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2), a major revision of the Big Five Inventory (BFI). Study 1 specified a hierarchical model of personality ...structure with 15 facet traits nested within the Big Five domains, and developed a preliminary item pool to measure this structure. Study 2 used conceptual and empirical criteria to construct the BFI-2 domain and facet scales from the preliminary item pool. Study 3 used data from 2 validation samples to evaluate the BFI-2's measurement properties and substantive relations with self-reported and peer-reported criteria. The results of these studies indicate that the BFI-2 is a reliable and valid personality measure, and an important advance over the original BFI. Specifically, the BFI-2 introduces a robust hierarchical structure, controls for individual differences in acquiescent responding, and provides greater bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power than the original BFI, while still retaining the original measure's conceptual focus, brevity, and ease of understanding. The BFI-2 therefore offers valuable new opportunities for research examining the structure, assessment, development, and life outcomes of personality traits.
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Cognitive tasks that produce reliable and robust effects at the group level often fail to yield reliable and valid individual differences. An ongoing debate among attention researchers is whether ...conflict resolution mechanisms are task-specific or domain-general, and the lack of correlation between most attention measures seems to favor the view that attention control is not a unitary concept. We have argued that the use of difference scores, particularly in reaction time (RT), is the primary cause of null and conflicting results at the individual differences level, and that methodological issues with existing tasks preclude making strong theoretical conclusions. The present article is an empirical test of this view in which we used a toolbox approach to develop and validate new tasks hypothesized to reflect attention processes. Here, we administered existing, modified, and new attention tasks to over 400 participants (final N = 396). Compared with the traditional Stroop and flanker tasks, performance on the accuracy-based measures was more reliable, had stronger intercorrelations, formed a more coherent latent factor, and had stronger associations to measures of working memory capacity and fluid intelligence. Further, attention control fully accounted for the relationship between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence. These results show that accuracy-based measures can be better suited to individual differences investigations than traditional RT tasks, particularly when the goal is to maximize prediction. We conclude that attention control is a unitary concept.
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The psychometric soundness of measures has been a central concern of articles published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP) since the inception of the journal. At the same time, it isn’t clear ...that investigators and reviewers prioritize psychometric soundness to a degree that would allow one to have sufficient confidence in conclusions regarding constructs. The purposes of the present article are to (a) examine current scale development and evaluation practices in JAP; (b) compare these practices to recommended practices, previous practices, and practices in other journals; and (c) use these comparisons to make recommendations for reviewers, editors, and investigators regarding the creation and evaluation of measures including Excel-based calculators for various indices. Finally, given that model complexity appears to have increased the need for short scales, we offer a user-friendly R Shiny app (https://orgscience.uncc.edu/about-us/resources) that identifies the subset of items that maximize a variety of psychometric criteria rather than merely maximizing alpha. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)
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We introduce and investigate the philosophical concept of 'speciesism' - the assignment of different moral worth based on species membership - as a psychological construct. In five studies, using ...both general population samples online and student samples, we show that speciesism is a measurable, stable construct with high interpersonal differences, that goes along with a cluster of other forms of prejudice, and is able to predict real-world decision-making and behavior. In Study 1 we present the development and empirical validation of a theoretically driven Speciesism Scale, which captures individual differences in speciesist attitudes. In Study 2, we show high test-retest reliability of the scale over a period of four weeks, suggesting that speciesism is stable over time. In Study 3, we present positive correlations between speciesism and prejudicial attitudes such as racism, sexism, homophobia, along with ideological constructs associated with prejudice such as social dominance orientation, system justification, and right-wing authoritarianism. These results suggest that similar mechanisms might underlie both speciesism and other well-researched forms of prejudice. Finally, in Studies 4 and 5, we demonstrate that speciesism is able to predict prosociality towards animals (both in the context of charitable donations and time investment) and behavioral food choices above and beyond existing related constructs. Importantly, our studies show that people morally value individuals of certain species less than others even when beliefs about intelligence and sentience are accounted for. We conclude by discussing the implications of a psychological study of speciesism for the psychology of human-animal relationships.
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A new conceptualization and measurement of social dominance orientation-individual differences in the preference for group based hierarchy and inequality-is introduced. In contrast to previous ...measures of social dominance orientation that were designed to be unidimensional, the new measure (SDO7) embeds theoretically grounded subdimensions of SDO-SDO-Dominance (SDO-D) and SDO-Egalitarianism (SDO-E). SDO-D constitutes a preference for systems of group-based dominance in which high status groups forcefully oppress lower status groups. SDO-E constitutes a preference for systems of group-based inequality that are maintained by an interrelated network of subtle hierarchy-enhancing ideologies and social policies. Confirmatory factor and criterion validity analyses confirmed that SDO-D and SDO-E are theoretically distinct and dissociate in terms of the intergroup outcomes they best predict. For the first time, distinct personality and individual difference bases of SDO-D and SDO-E are outlined. We clarify the construct validity of SDO by strictly assessing a preference for dominance hierarchies in general, removing a possible confound relating to support for hierarchy benefitting the ingroup. Consistent with this, results show that among members of a disadvantaged ethnic minority group (African Americans), endorsement of SDO7 is inversely related to ingroup identity. We further demonstrate these effects using nationally representative samples of U.S. Blacks and Whites, documenting the generalizability of these findings. Finally, we introduce and validate a brief 4-item measure of each dimension. This article importantly extends our theoretical understanding of one of the most generative constructs in social psychology, and introduces powerful new tools for its measurement.
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The number of intensive longitudinal studies that investigate affective experiences at the within-person rather than the between-person level is rapidly increasing. This paradigmatic shift comes with ...new challenges, such as questions revolving around how to measure within-person affect variation or more fundamental questions about the reliability and validity of constructs at the within-person level. We provide a review of substantive research published in Emotion since 2005, which revealed that to date no consensus has been established on measurement instruments for assessing within-person affective experiences. Our review also showed that researchers who are interested in within-person affect variation sometimes rely on measurement instruments that were established at the between-person level, which we think should be reconsidered. Finally, reliability estimates of state variation have been developed but are not comprehensively reported in studies on within-person affect variation. The purpose of this article is therefore to alert the reader to these issues and to highlight relevant criteria for selecting items and measurement instruments when studying within-person affect variation in intensive longitudinal studies. We recommend establishing common standards for measuring within-person affect variation and drawing from a common pool of instruments, which would allow direct comparison of results across studies.
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