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This article discusses the ability of the Driving Vengeance Questionnaire to accurately predict driver violence, aggression, and road rage. Topics include destructive behavior, stress, and revenge.

This study evaluates the validity of a psychological assessment tool used to measure depressive symptomatology in cocaine-addicted inmates of a county jail. Results establish the construct validity, concurrent validity, and internal consistency of the test and indicate that it is appropriate for use with drug-dependent and prison populations.

This article examines two validity scales used in a psychological assessment tool designed to measure thinking styles that contribute to criminal behavioral patterns. The validity scales specifically measure confusion and defensiveness and were revised to ensure improved test-retest reliability, internal consistency, and criterion validity.

Background - based on experiences and empirical evidence gained in studies using the Lancashire Quality of Life Profile (LQLP), the Manchester Short Assessment of Quality of Life (MANSA) has been developed as a condensed and slightly modified instrument for assessing quality of life. Its properties have been tested in a sample of community care patients. Method - Fifty-five randomly selected patients on the Care Programme Approach were interviewed using the LQLP, the MANSA and the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale. Results - Correlations between subjective quality of life scores on MANSA and LQLP were all 0.83 or higher (0.94 for the satisfaction mean score). Cronbach's alpha for satisfaction ratings was 0.74, and association with psychopathology was in line with results for LQLP as reported in the literature. Conclusions - The MANSA is a brief instrument for assessing quality of life focusing on satisfaction with life as a whole and with life domains. Its psychometric properties appear satisfactory.

Psychological profiling based on facet theory offers a useful methodology for risk assessment concerning the mentally ill in the community. Its usage could reduce hospital admissions and prevent further legislation permitting more intrusive supervision in the community. A review of the literature on the facet approach to psychological profiling indicates that it does not offer a perfect solution for assessing whether a person presents a danger to themselves or others in the community. However, it provides a more objective evaluation than existing approaches.

S. L. Neuberg, T. N. Judice, and S. G. West (1997) faulted our work with the Need for Closure Scale (NFCS) on grounds that the NFCS lacks discriminant validity relative to S. L. Neuberg's and J. T. Newsom's (1993) Personal Need for Structure (PNS) Scale and is multidimensional, which, so they claim, renders the use of its total score inadmissible. By contrast, the present authors show that neither of the above assertions is incompatible with the underlying need for closure theory. Relations between NFCS and the PNS are to be expected, as these were designed to operationalize the very same construct (of need for closure). Furthermore, no unidimensionality of the NFCS has been claimed, and none is required to use its total score for testing various theoretically derived predictions. An instrument's ultimate utility hinges on theoretical considerations and empirical evidence rather than on questionable psychometric dogma unrelated to the substantive matters at hand.

D. M. Webster and A. W. Kruglanski's (1994) Need for Closure Scale (NFCS) confounds multiple dimensions and is redundant with existing instruments (S. L. Neuberg, T. N. Judice, & S. G. West, 1997). A. W. Kruglanski and his colleagues (1997) dismissed these findings as 'psychometric naysaying,' although they presented no data that refute them. Moreover, Kruglanski et al. (1997) suggested that researchers (a) be unconcerned with the NFCS's lack of discriminant validity and (b) use the scale as if it were unidimensional. These recommendations are problematic. Using the NFCS in this manner invites interpretational ambiguity and theoretical confusion. In contrast to the Kruglanski et al. (1997) position, proper psychometric analyses play a critical role in theory testing and in the development of conceptually coherent measures of individual differences.

The Drug-Taking Confidence Questionnaire (DTCQ) is a 50-item self-report questionnaire designed to evaluate situation-specific coping self-efficacy for utilization of a specific substance. Findings from exploratory and confirmatory factor applications of the DTCQ on 713 addiction patients indicated a situation-specificity of efficacy beliefs. All eight subscales of the DTCQ were found to have good reliability.

The Need for Closure Scale (NFCS; D. M. Webster & A. W. Kruglanski, 1994) was introduced to assess the extent to which a person, faced with a decision or judgment, desires any answer, as compared with confusion and ambiguity. The NFCS was presented as being unidimensional and as having adequate discriminant validity. Our data contradict these conceptual and psychometric claims. As a unidimensional scale, the NFCS is redundant with the Personal Need for Structure Scale (PNS; M. M. Thompson, M. E. Naccarato, & K. E. Parker, 1989). When the NFCS is used more appropriately as a multidimensional instrument, 3 of its facets are redundant with the PNS Scale, and a 4th is redundant with the Personal Fear of Invalidity Scale (M. M. Thompson et al., 1989). It is suggested that the NFCS masks important distinctions between 2 independent epistemic motives: the preference for quick, decisive answers (nonspecific closure) and the need to create and maintain simple structures (one form of specific closure).

This study examines the discriminant validity of the Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC-40) in a clinical sample. The TSC-40 was developed as a research instrument for assessing the impact of a history of sexual victimization. Previous validity studies used nonclinical samples of women (Elliott & Briere, 1992; Gold, Milan, Myall, & Johnson, 1994). In the present study, the TSC-40 was administered to 103 men and 79 women requesting services at two outpatient clinics. Information about sexual victimization was collected from the client during intake and from the therapist after the client had received 6 months of therapy. A history of CSA was associated both with high symptom levels across symptom dimensions, and, specifically, with elevation on the trauma subscale of the TSC-40. The findings support the view that, in a clinical setting, CSA is associated both with generalized distress and with PTSD symptoms. Key Words - TSC-40, Validity, Victimization.

A new instrument assessing risk in substance abuse-affected families is presented. The instrument assesses those dimensions of substance abuse that make it more difficult for parents to meet the basic needs of their children. It also assesses those components of the parent's environment that may increase risk to the family's well-being. Information is presented on the instrument's reliability and validity. The article concludes with a discussion of the issues involved in assessing the risk for child abuse and neglect in families where there is an identified substance abuse problem. Key Words - Risk, Assessment, Substance abuse, Child welfare.

This article describes a revised Conflict Tactics Scales (the CTS2) to measure psychological and physical attacks on a partner in a marital, cohabiting, or dating relationship; and also use of negotiation. The CTS2 has (a) additional items to enhance content validity and reliability; (b) revised wording to increase clarity and specificity; (c) better differentiation between minor and severe levels of each scale; (d) new scales to measure sexual coercion and physical injury; and (e) a new format to simplify administration and reduce response sets. Reliability ranges from .79 to .95. There is preliminary evidence of construct validity.

Defining hope as a cognitive set comprising agency (belief in one's capacity to initiate and sustain actions) and pathways (belief in one's capacity to generate routes) to reach goals, the Hope Scale was developed and validated previously as a dispositional self-report measure of hope (Snyder et al., 1991). The present 4 studies were designed to develop and validate a measure of state hope. The 6-item State Hope Scale is internally consistent and reflects the theorized agency and pathways components. The relationships of the State Hope Scale to other measures demonstrate concurrent and discriminant validity; moreover, the scale is responsive to events in the lives of people as evidenced by data gathered through both correlational and causal designs. The State Hope Scale offers a brief, internally consistent, and valid self-report measure of ongoing goal-directed thinking that may be useful to researchers and applied professionals.

This study examined the incremental validity of the Defining Issues Test (DIT), a test purporting to measure moral reasoning ability relative to verbal ability and other major markers of the construct of general intelligence (g). Across 2 independent studies of intellectually precocious adolescents (top 0.5%), results obtained with the DIT revealed that gifted individuals earned significantly higher moral reasoning scores than did their average-ability peers; they also scored higher than college freshmen, who were 4 to 5 years older. The relative standing of the intellectually gifted adolescents on moral reasoning, however, appears to be due to their superior level of verbal ability as opposed to any of a number of the other psychological variables examined here. The hypothesis that the DIT is conceptually distinct from conventional measures of verbal ability was not confirmed. Investigators conducting subsequent studies involving the assessment of moral reasoning are advised to incorporate measures of verbal ability into their designs, thereby enabling them to ascertain whether moral reasoning measures are indeed capturing systematic sources of individual differences distinct from verbal ability. This idea also is relevant to other concepts and measures purporting to assess optimal forms of human functioning more generally (e.g., creativity, ego development, and self-actualization).

This paper discusses the influence that 'beliefs concerning the corrective effects of punishment' have on child punishment and abuse in a Mexican population. One hundred and five mothers responded to a questionnaire measuring these beliefs, and their responses were contrasted with the report those mothers gave regarding the physical punishment they inflict upon their children. A scale consisting of six items registering beliefs was developed and administered. The reliability (internal consistency) of the scale was assessed, and its validity was tested by using a factor analytic structural equations model which produced high factorial loadings from a 'beliefs' factor to the scale's items. This was interpreted as a confirmation of construct validity. An indication of predictive validity was found in a high, significant structural correlation between the beliefs factor and a 'corrective punishment' factor, measured by a series of related items. Mothers reported as abusing their children produced higher scores on the 'beliefs' scale as compared to 'control' mothers. The direct, significant effect of parent's beliefs on the punishment of children explains much about the child maltreatment problem in the studied society. Key Words - Disciplinary beliefs, Corrective punishment, Severe punishment, Mexican mothers.

A Likert-type scale was developed and used to measure attitudes toward recycling among 452 male and female undergraduates. The instrument had high pan-whole correlations and satisfactory reliability. There was a predictable relationship between attitudes toward recycling and attitudes toward environmental issues, rights issues, and political participation., Solutions to the increasingly serious problem of environmental waste in the United States are at least partially dependent on attitudes about recycling. In their comprehensive review of the literature, Van [...]

Tomkins's polarity theory and the Polarity Scale derived from it constitute a promising but relatively neglected approach to researching the relationship between personality and ideology. We investigated the psychometric properties of the Polarity Scale with a sample of White South African students (N = 79). Although adequate reliabilities were obtained for various scorings of the Polarity Scale, and previous research has shown that scores on the scale relate to personality and affective differences, in this study the scale failed to show correlations with political party preference, liberalism/conservatism self-rating, or anti-Black prejudice. Only the Humanist subscale had a significant, though not very strong, correlation with acceptance of parental religion. Scores on the Polarity Scale were also significantly, though weakly, related to right-wing authoritarianism. These findings suggest that items in the Polarity Scale did not relate strongly enough to indicators of ideological orientation to indicate that they play a primary causal role as the underlying organizing psychological dimension determining ideological orientation., RESEARCHERS HAVE NOT YET DEFINITIVELY CLARIFIED how sociopolitical attitudes are ideologically organized. Nonetheless, research using factor analyses of large numbers of social belief and attitude items has usually supported a [...]

Four studies examined the dimensionality, reliability and construct validity of the Driving Appraisal Inventory (DAI), a self-report measure of driving habits and skills. In Study 1, analysis of 127 items led to the formation of four unidimensional, internally reliable scales: Carelessness, Drunken Driving, Vehicle Safety, and Self-Evaluation. In Study 2, all were found to have acceptable test-retest reliability. In Study 3, convergent validity support was obtained for the Carelessness and Vehicle Safety scales. In Study 4, concurrent criterion-related validity support was obtained for the Carelessness and Drunken Driving scales. Scores on the Self-Evaluation scale appear to be more a function of self-confidence and/or ego-involvement in driving skills and less a function of actual driving skills. Men score higher than women do on the Carelessness, Drunken Driving, and Self-Evaluation scales, and in Study 4, criterion-related validity of the Self-Evaluation scale was stronger among women than among men.

The Reasons for Living Inventory (RFL) has been shown to be reliable and valid for adults. To ascertain its factor structure and internal consistency for adolescents, 128 southern high school students (mean age = 15 years) and 145 adolescent college students completed it. A six factor solution to a principal components factor analysis followed by varimax rotation accounted for 53.6% and 49.8% of the variance in the two groups. For both groups, Cronbach alphas were strong (range = .77 to .92) for all subscales except Moral Objections, which was unsatisfactory (.57 and .61). Means were higher than those of adults who reported never considering suicide. A Goodness of Fit Index was poor, suggesting that the factors in teens' reasons for living are different from adults. The overall RFL score appears to be a reasonable instrument for adolescents to use, and a low score should be taken as particularly troublesome.

A review of research studies has revealed various unresolved aspects and issues related to phallometric tests used in identifying and legally implicating child abusers. Studies indicate that men accused of sexual child abuse can control their response to phallometric tests, such as penile plethysmography, thereby affecting the test validity. Therefore, results of these tests should be verified through other measures to obtain foolproof evidence in child abuse cases.

Factor structures of the 60- and 30-item versions of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) were explored, using data collected from 236 Japanese high-school and university students. The 60-item version produced factors interprete as social functioning, anxiety, somatic symptoms, and severe depression; the 30-item version produced general dysphoria, social functioning, depressive thoughts, difficulty in concentration and insomnia. Although the two versions of the GHQ produced the same number of factors, their structures differed in content. Thus it may be necessary to examine the factor structures of the GHQ when using it in a study of a population containing subjects with different cultural backgrounds.

Defensiveness and a tendency to agree bias findings based on unbalanced measures of the sense of control. A comprehensive model shows the defense bias introduced by not balancing the number of statements about good and bad outcomes and the agreement bias introduced by not balancing the number of internal (instrumental) and external (fatalistic) statements. Notably, indexes that are composed only of external statements have spuriously larger variances, reliabilities, and correlations than do those that are composed solely of internal statements. Thus study develops and evaluates a balanced 2X2 measure of the sense of control over one's own life. The measure has three properties: (1) it is not biased by self-defense and self-blame or by the tendency to agree with statements regardless of content; (2) it has construct validity for community survey research on income, education, minority status, aging, or well-being; and (3) its form and length are suitable for community surveys. The index is validated using data from 225 students and from 713 residents of Illinois.

The psychological test developed by Cassidy and Lynn to measure achievement motivation in 1989 can be used with adult employees in various countries because they are internally consistent. But it must be used with care because the items used are not simple in structure. The validity of the test must be further verified by psychometric analyses and experimental methods to make clear achievement motivation as a multidimensional psychological concept., Achievement motivation is a multidimensional concept defined as competition with a standard of excellence or as the desire of people to set and realize goals for themselves (Clark, Varadarajan, & [...]

Objective: The aims of this study are to demonstrate 1) the criterion validity of the Abel Assessment for sexual interest[TM] (AASI) based on its ability to discriminate between non child molesters and admitting child molesters, and 2) its resistance to falsification based on its ability to discriminate between liar-denier child molesters and non child molesters. Method: A group of 747 participants matched by age, race, and income was used to develop three logistic regression equations. The models compare a group of non child molesting patients under evaluation for other paraphilias to three groups: 1) a group of admitting molesters of girls under 14 years of age, 2) a group of admitting molesters of boys under 14 years of age, and 3) a group believed to be concealing or denying having molested. Results: Both of the equations designed to discriminate between admitting child molesters and non child molesters were statistically significant. The equation contrasting child molesters attempting to conceal or deny their behavior and non child molesting patients was also statistically significant. Conclusions: The models classifying admitting child molesters versus non child molesters demonstrate criterion validity, while the third model provides evidence of the AASI's resistance to falsification and its utility as a tool in the detection of child molesters who deny the behavior. Results of the equations are reported and suggestions for their use are discussed. [C] 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Logistic regression; Child molestation; Classification models; Falsification; Adult males

The Perinatal Grief Scale (PGS) has been used in many studies of loss in pregnancy, including miscarriage, stillbirth, induced abortion, neonatal death, and relinquishment for adoption. This article describes 22 studies from 4 countries that used the PGS with a total of 2485 participants. Studies that report Cronbach's alpha for their own samples give evidence of very high internal consistency reliability. Evidence for the validity of the PGS is also reviewed, such as convergent validity seen in its association with measures of mental health, social support, and marital satisfaction. The standard errors of the means for the total scale and for the subscales reveal fairly consistent scores, in spite of very different samples and types of loss; computation of means and standard deviations for the studies as a whole permits us to establish normal score ranges. Significantly higher scores were found in studies that recruited participants from support groups and self-selected populations rather than from medical sources, and from U.S. studies compared with those in Europe.

The purpose of this article is to provide data on a recently developed instrument to measure the multidimensional nature of the bereavement process. In contrast to widely used grief instruments that have been developed using rational methods of instrument construction, the Hogan Grief Reaction Checklist (HGRC) was developed empirically from data collected from bereaved adults who had experienced the death of a loved one. Factor analysis of the HGRC revealed 6 factors in the normal trajectory of the grieving process: Despair, Panic Behavior, Blame and Anger, Detachment, Disorganization, and Personal Growth. Additional data are provided that support reliability and validity of the HGRC as well as its ability to discriminate variability in the grieving process as a function of cause of death and time lapsed since death. Empirical support is also provided for Personal Growth as an integral component of the bereavement process. The article concludes by considering the substantive as well as psychometric findings of this research for such issues as traumatic grief, anticipatory grief, change in the bereaved person's self-schema, and spiritual and existential growth.

ABSTRACT. Over the years, researchers have developed various short versions of the Marlowe--Crowne Social Desirability Scale (D. P. Crowne & D. Marlowe, 1960). The authors used confirmatory factor analyses (J. [...]

ABSTRACT. Global interpersonal mistrust is conceptualized as a general mistrust of the motives of others in situations related to one's well-being: a general tendency to view others as mean, selfish, [...]

The Self-Reporting Questionnaire is a screening instrument devised by the WHO to identify minor psychiatric morbidity in primary care settings and the community in developing countries. It has already been widely used although its psychometric properties are not yet completely explained. The present article describes the following properties of the Portuguese version of the SRQ-20: a) coefficients of internal consistency; b) inter-rater reliability coefficients, and c) a factor analysis. Internal consistency, measured by the KD20 method, was 0.81. The intra-class correlation coefficient obtained from simultaneous scoring of four interviewers was 0.96, considerably high, as expected from a structured instrument. In the factor analysis four main factors accounted for 41% of the total item variance, and they could be reasonably identified as Decreased Energy, Somatic symptoms, Depressive mood and Depressive thoughts.