German and Italian validation of the Dyadic Coping Inventory-Sexual Minority Stress (DCI-SMS) scale.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals (hereafter people with minoritized sexual orientation and/or gender identities) have limited legal rights and access to resources because of their marginalized status in society. These limitations are associated with notable health disparities and increase experiences of minority stress. For those in a romantic relationship, being able to communicate and cope with one's partner-dyadic coping-can help buffer stress' deleterious effects on well-being. Given the promise of understanding how dyadic coping can mitigate experiences of sexual minority stress, the Dyadic Coping Inventory-Sexual Minority Stress (DCI-SMS) was recently created and validated with those living in the United States to assess how partners cope with sexual minority stress. Answering a global call to expand psychological science beyond a U.S. centric perspective, the purpose of this study was to validate the DCI-SMS in German and Italian using samples from Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, respectively. Confirmatory factor analysis results, along with tests of convergent and discriminant validity, and measurement invariance, suggest that the DCI-SMS is a valid measure of stress communication and dyadic coping behaviors for those in a same-gender relationship in the countries sampled. Important future directions include examining its efficacy in other countries, such as those with more adverse sociopolitical climates for people with minoritized sexual orientation and/or gender identities in a same-gender relationship. Limitations and future directions for research and clinical practice are presented. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Vignette responses and future intentions in a health decision-making context: How well do they correlate?

INTRODUCTION: Vignettes are commonly used to assess health care decision making when it is impractical or unethical to use experimental methods. We sought to determine whether decisions made in response to hypothetical vignettes requiring medical decisions for self or parents related to reported future likelihoods of engaging in similar behaviors. METHOD: Respondents (n = 1,862) were adults recruited in person in general community settings. Individuals were assigned randomly to read 1 of a variety of vignettes that presented various medical problems being experienced either by oneself or a parent in a hypothetical context. Individuals reported their likelihoods of hiring a health care advocate to perform a variety of tasks in the context of the vignette and their likelihoods of hiring a health care advocate for themselves or their own parents in the future. Multigroup analysis was performed to estimate a latent variable path model for the vignette hiring questions and real-world future intention to hire by condition. RESULTS: The configural model was retained. Tests of invariance for the correlation between future intentions to hire and the latent variable from the vignette decision making indicated a significant difference between self and parent conditions. However, moderate relationships existed between vignette responses and future intentions in both conditions, with approximately 25% of the variance in personal, future intentions being accounted for by vignette responses. DISCUSSION: Our findings support the continued study of vignettes as a possible tool to measure behavioral intentions in the context of positive and negative health care decisions impacting self and others. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).