Thinking About Sum Scores Yet Again, Maybe the Last Time, We Don't Know, Oh No . . .: A Comment on.

The relative advantages and disadvantages of sum scores and estimated factor scores are issues of concern for substantive research in psychology. Recently, while championing estimated factor scores over sum scores, McNeish offered a trenchant rejoinder to an article by Widaman and Revelle, which had critiqued an earlier paper by McNeish and Wolf. In the recent contribution, McNeish misrepresented a number of claims by Widaman and Revelle, rendering moot his criticisms of Widaman and Revelle.

What are the mathematical bounds for coefficient α?

Coefficient α, although ubiquitous in the research literature, is frequently criticized for being a poor estimate of test reliability. In this note, we consider the range of α and prove that it has no lower bound (i.e.

Understanding the Magnitude of Psychological Differences Between Women and Men Requires Seeing the Forest and the Trees.

Whether women and men are psychologically very similar or quite different is a contentious issue in psychological science. This article clarifies this issue by demonstrating that larger and smaller sex/gender differences can reflect differing ways of organizing the same data. For single psychological constructs, larger differences emerge from averaging multiple indicators that differ by sex/gender to produce scales of a construct's overall typicality for women versus men.

Thinking thrice about sum scores, and then some more about measurement and analysis.

Measurement is fundamental to all research in psychology and should be accorded greater scrutiny than typically occurs. Among other claims, McNeish and Wolf (Thinking twice about sum scores. Behavior Research Methods, 52, 2287-2305) argued that use of sum scores (a) implies that a highly constrained latent variable model underlies items comprising a scale, and (b) may misrepresent or bias relations with other criteria.

Alterations in Emotional Diversity Correspond With Increased Severity of Attenuated Positive and Negative Symptoms in the Clinical High-Risk Syndrome.

Alterations in emotional functioning are a key feature of psychosis and are present in individuals with a clinical high-risk (CHR) syndrome. However, little is known about alterations in emotional diversity (i.e.

Between- and within-person structures of value traits and value states: Four different structures, four different interpretations.

Objective: The circular structure of values has been verified mostly at a between-person level and on measures of general value preferences. In this manuscript, we argue that it is a simplification that neglected significant aspects of the value structures and distinguish four different types of structures: (a) between-person structure of value traits, (b) within-person structure of value traits, (c) between-person structure of value states, and (d) within-person structure of value states. We argue that the within-person structure of value states addresses the circular structure of values most accurately.

A map of desire: multidimensional scaling of men's sexual interest in male and female children and adults.

Background: Men sexually interested in children of a specific combination of maturity and sex tend to show some lesser interest in other categories of persons. Patterns of men's sexual interest across erotic targets' categories of maturity and sex have both clinical and basic scientific implications.

Method: We examined the structure of men's sexual interest in adult, pubescent, and prepubescent males and females using multidimensional scaling (MDS) across four datasets, using three large samples and three indicators of sexual interest: phallometric response to erotic stimuli, sexual offense history, and self-reported sexual attraction.

A robust data-driven approach identifies four personality types across four large data sets.

Understanding human personality has been a focus for philosophers and scientists for millennia. It is now widely accepted that there are about five major personality domains that describe the personality profile of an individual. In contrast to personality traits, the existence of personality types remains extremely controversial.

Reliability from α to ω: A tutorial.

Reliability is a fundamental problem for measurement in all of science. Although defined in multiple ways, and estimated in even more ways, the basic concepts seem straightforward and need to be understood by practitioners as well as methodologists. Reliability theory is not just for the psychometrician estimating latent variables, it is for everyone who wants to make inferences from measures of individuals or of groups.

Factor Analysis of Negative Symptom Items in the Structured Interview for Prodromal Syndromes.

Background: Negative symptoms occur early in the clinical high risk (CHR) state and indicate increased risk of conversion to psychotic disorder and poor functional outcome. However, while the negative symptom domain has shown to be parsimoniously explained by a 2-factor construct in schizophrenia, there has yet to be an established factor structure of negative symptoms in CHR.

Methods: 214 individuals meeting the Structured Interview for Psychosis-Risk Syndromes (SIPS) criteria for CHR were recruited through 3 active research programs in the United States.

The Big Five, Everyday Contexts and Activities, and Affective Experience.

Prior research shows that personality traits predict time spent with different people and frequency of engagement in different activities. Further, personality traits, company, and activity are related to the experience of affect. However, little research has examined personality, context, and affect together in the same study.

The personality of U.S. states: Stability from 1999 to 2015.

Researchers have shown an interest in the aggregated Big Five personality of U.S. states, but typically they have relied on scores from a single sample (Rentfrow, Gosling, & Potter, 2008).

Velocity Explains the Links between Personality States and Affect.

The present research examined whether perceived rate of progress toward a goal (velocity) mediated the relationships between personality states and affective states. Drawing from control theories of self-regulation, we hypothesized (i) that increased velocity would mediate the association between state extraversion and state positive affect, and (ii) that decreased velocity would mediate the association between state neuroticism and state negative affect. We tested these hypotheses in 2 experience sampling methodology studies that each spanned 2 weeks.

Finding a Life Worth Living: Meaning in Life and Graduation from College.

Graduation from college is an important milestone for young adults, marked by mixed emotions and poignancy, and therefore is an especially salient context for studying meaning in life. The present research used experience-sampling methodology to examine the antecedents and consequences of students' experience of meaning in life over the course of graduation. Participants were 74 graduating students who provided a total of 538 reports over the span of three days, including commencement day.

The Data Box and Within-Subject Analyses: A Comment on Nesselroade and Molenaar (2016).

Nesselroade and Molenaar suggest that it is the relationships between latent variables within subjects that are invariant across subjects and thus the appropriate unit of analysis. We disagree and take the view that between-factor correlations may differ systematically across subjects. Further, individual differences in these correlations may be an important source of information about each unique individual.

Within-subject covariation between depression- and anxiety-related affect.

Studies find a strong positive relationship between the affective components of anxiety and depression. However, most research thus far has examined the between-person correlations among these constructs, while ignoring how changes in these two types of affect covary over time within a person. Within-person correlations could differ meaningfully from how anxiety- and depression-related affect relate across individuals.

Prospective associations of low positive emotionality with first onsets of depressive and anxiety disorders: Results from a 10-wave latent trait-state modeling study.

Unipolar depressive disorders and anxiety disorders co-occur at high rates and can be difficult to distinguish from one another. Cross-sectional evidence has demonstrated that whereas all these disorders are characterized by high negative emotion, low positive emotion shows specificity in its associations with depressive disorders, social anxiety disorder, and possibly generalized anxiety disorder. However, it remains unknown whether low positive emotionality, a personality trait characterized by the tendency to experience low positive emotion over time, prospectively marks risk for the initial development of these disorders.

Affect, Behavior, Cognition, and Desire in the Big Five: An Analysis of Item Content and Structure.

Personality psychology is concerned with affect (A), behavior (B), cognition (C) and desire (D), and personality traits have been defined conceptually as abstractions used to either explain or summarize coherent ABC (and sometimes D) patterns over time and space. However, this conceptual definition of traits has not been reflected in their operationalization, possibly resulting in theoretical and practical limitations to current trait inventories. Thus, the goal of this project was to determine the affective, behavioral, cognitive and desire (ABCD) components of Big-Five personality traits.

A relational structure of voluntary visual-attention abilities.

Many studies have examined attention mechanisms involved in specific behavioral tasks (e.g., search, tracking, distractor inhibition).

Measuring Positive Emotion With the Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire: Psychometric Properties of the Anhedonic Depression Scale.

Low positive emotion distinguishes depression from most types of anxiety. Formative work in this area employed the Anhedonic Depression scale from the Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire (MASQ-AD), and the MASQ-AD has since become a popular measure of positive emotion, often used independently of the full MASQ. However, two key assumptions about the MASQ-AD-that it should be represented by a total scale score, and that it measures time-variant experiences-have not been adequately tested.

Quality of social experience explains the relation between extraversion and positive affect.

The personality trait extraversion is associated with higher positive affect, and individuals who behave in an extraverted way experience increased positive affect. Across 2 studies, we examine whether the positive affectivity of extraverts can be explained in terms of qualitative aspects of social experience resulting from extraverted (i.e.

Development and validation of the comprehensive health activities scale: a new approach to health literacy measurement.

Current health literacy measures have been criticized for solely measuring reading and numeracy skills when a broader set of skills is necessary for making informed health decisions, especially when information is often conveyed verbally and through multimedia video. The authors devised 9 health tasks and a corresponding 190-item assessment to more comprehensively measure health literacy skills. A sample of 826 participants between the ages of 55 and 74 years who were recruited from an academic general internal medicine practice and three federally qualified health centers in Chicago, Illinois, completed the assessment.

A latent variable model approach to estimating systematic bias in the oversampling method.

The method of oversampling data from a preselected range of a variable's distribution is often applied by researchers who wish to study rare outcomes without substantially increasing sample size. Despite frequent use, however, it is not known whether this method introduces statistical bias due to disproportionate representation of a particular range of data. The present study employed simulated data sets to examine how oversampling introduces systematic bias in effect size estimates (of the relationship between oversampled predictor variables and the outcome variable), as compared with estimates based on a random sample.

The General Factor of Personality: A General Critique.

Recently, it has been proposed that all non-cognitive measures of personality share a general factor of personality. A problem with many of these studies is a lack of clarity in defining a general factor. In this paper we address the multiple ways in which a general factor has been identified and argue that many of these approaches find factors that are not in fact general.