Development of a Revised Version of the Statistical Anxiety Scale / Desarrollo de una Versión Revisada de la Escala de Ansiedad Estadística

Background: Statistics anxiety is a common problem in students taking statistics courses in the social sciences. It is most widely measured by the statistical anxiety scale. The various adaptations of this instrument have shown certain problems in the replication of its factorial structure and do not have a system to control possible response bias effects. The objective of our study was to propose a short test to measure statistical anxiety that also includes a scale to control social desirability bias. Method: We developed a revised version of the statistical anxiety scale using procedures for controlling response biases and examined its factorial structure using exploratory and confirmatory analysis in a sample of 531 students. Results: The revised version showed a clear four-factor structure in exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with the expected three content factors plus one social desirability factor. The scales showed no acquiescence effects and moderate social desirability effects, and had a clear relationship with academic success. Conclusions: The revised version of the statistical anxiety scale improves on the psychometric properties of the original version and may overcome the problems detected in some adaptations of the previous version.(AU)

Antecedentes: La ansiedad estadística es un problema habitual en los estudiantes que cursan materias relacionadas con la estadística en las ciencias sociales. Una de las escalas más utilizadas en su evaluación es la Escala de Ansiedad Estadística. En algunas adaptaciones se han detectado problemas en la replicación de su estructura factorial y no controlan los sesgos de respuesta. El objetivo de nuestra investigación fue proponer un test para la evaluación de la ansiedad estadística incluyendo una escala para el control de la deseabilidad social. Método: Se desarrolló una versión revisada de la escala utilizando procedimientos para el control de la deseabilidad social analizándose su estructura factorial en una muestra de 531 estudiantes. Resultados: La versión revisada mostró un ajuste adecuado tanto a nivel exploratorio como confirmatorio a una estructura de cuatro factores; los tres de contenido esperados y un factor de deseabilidad social. Las escalas no mostraron efectos de la aquiescencia y un moderado efecto de la deseabilidad social, además las escalas de contenido mostraron una clara relación con el rendimiento académico. Conclusiones: La versión revisada de la escala mejora las propiedades de la versión precedente y puede solventar los problemas detectados en algunas adaptaciones de la misma.(AU)

Young Children's Ability to Describe Intermediate Clothing Placement.

Children's ability to adequately describe clothing placement is essential to evaluating their allegations of sexual abuse. Intermediate clothing placement (partially removed clothing) may be difficult for young children to describe, requiring more detailed explanations to indicate the location of clothing (e.g., the clothes were pulled down to the knees). The current study investigated 172 3- to 6-year-olds' descriptions of clothing placement when responding to commonly used questions (yes/no, forced-choice, open-choice, where), as well as children's on-off response tendencies when describing intermediate placement (i.e., labeling the clothing as fully on or off). Results revealed that where questions were superior in eliciting intermediate descriptions, even for the youngest children. Children sometimes exhibited tendencies to describe intermediate placements as "on" or "off," which varied by question-type and clothing placement. The implications of the findings for interviewing young children about sexual abuse are discussed.

Moses, money, and multiple-choice: The Moses illusion in a multiple-choice format with high incentives.

When people answer the question "How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the Ark?", they usually respond with "two," although Moses does not appear in the biblical story of the Ark. We investigated this "Moses illusion" in a multiple-choice format and tested the influence of monetary incentives on the illusion's strength. Thereby, we addressed the role of a cooperative communication context for the illusion's emergence, as well as the role of participants' motivation. In four experiments (total N = 914), we found that the Moses illusion persists in a multiple-choice format. As the multiple-choice format realizes a cooperative context in which the correct answer is always available, we exclude a cooperative context explanation for the illusion. Monetary incentives reduced the strength of the illusion. However, the reduction was numerically and statistically small. We thereby show that the illusion is not due to violations of cooperative communications, and not due to a lack of motivation. The multiple-choice approach will facilitate further research on the Moses illusion and the data provide additional evidence for the Moses illusion's empirical robustness and constrain its theoretical explanations.

Is Correcting for Acquiescence Increasing the External Validity of Personality Test Scores? / ¿La Corrección por Aquiescencia Aumenta la Validez Externa de las Puntuaciones en Personalidad?

Background: Balanced scales control for acquiescence (ACQ) because the tendency of the respondent to agree with the positive items is cancelled out by the tendency to agree with opposite-pole items. When full balance is achieved, ACQ is not expected to affect external validity. Otherwise, attenuated estimates are expected to appear if no control methods such as Lorenzo-Seva & Ferrando’s (2009) are used. Method: Expected results were derived analytically. Subsequently, a simulation was carried out to assess (a) how ACQ impacted external validity and (b) how validity estimates behaved when ACQ was corrected. Two illustrative examples are provided. Results: A sizable number of items and/or high content loadings tended to decrease ACQ’s impact on validity estimates, making the empirical coefficient closer to its structural value. Furthermore, when scales were well balanced, the controlled and uncorrected scores were close to each other, and led to unbiased validity estimates. When the scales were unbalanced and no corrections were used, attenuated empirical validity coefficients inevitably appeared. Conclusions: Designing a well-balanced test or correcting for ACQ are the best ways to minimize attenuation in external validity estimation. (AU)

Antecedentes: construir escalas balanceadas permite controlar la aquiescencia (ACQ), haciendo que la tendencia del encuestado a estar de acuerdo con los ítems positivos se cancele con la tendencia a estar de acuerdo con los ítems del polo opuesto. En caso contrario, se esperarán estimaciones atenuadas de los coeficientes de validez externa en caso de no utilizar algún método de control (Lorenzo-Seva & Ferrando, 2009). Método: se llevó a cabo (a) un desarrollo analítico (b) una simulación para evaluar (a) el impacto de ACQ en la validez externa y (b) el comportamiento de las estimaciones de validez cuando se corrige por ACQ. Incluyendo finalmente dos ejemplos ilustrativos. Resultados: número alto de ítems y/o cargas altas en el factor de contenido tienden a disminuir el impacto de ACQ en las estimaciones de validez. Además, con escalas balanceadas por diseño, las diferencias entre las puntuaciones corregidas y no corregidas son menores, llevando a estimaciones de validez insesgadas. En escalas no balanceadas ni corregidas aparece una atenuación en el coeficiente de validez empírico. Conclusiones: diseñar pruebas balanceadas o corregir ACQ son las mejores maneras de minimizar la atenuación en la estimación de la validez externa. (AU)

Person-Fit as an Index of Inattentive Responding: A Comparison of Methods Using Polytomous Survey Data.

Self-report measures are vulnerable to response biases that can degrade the accuracy of conclusions drawn from results. In low-stakes measures, inattentive or careless responding can be especially problematic. A variety of a priori and post hoc methods exist for detecting these aberrant response patterns. Previous research indicates that nonparametric person-fit statistics tend to be the most accurate post hoc method for detecting inattentive responding on measures with dichotomous outcomes. This study investigated the accuracy and impact on model fit of parametric and nonparametric person-fit statistics in detecting inattentive responding with polytomous response scales. Receiver operating curve (ROC) analysis was used to determine the accuracy of each detection metric, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) fit indices were used to examine the impact of using person-fit statistics to identify inattentive respondents. ROC analysis showed the nonparametric H T statistic offered the most area under the curve when predicting a proxy for inattentive responding. The CFA fit indices showed the impact of using the person-fit statistics largely depends on the purpose (and cutoff) for using the person-fit statistics. Implications for using person-fit statistics to identify inattentive responders are discussed further.

The INventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits and Antisocial Behavior (INCA) for Young People: Development and Validation in a Community Sample.

Callous-unemotional traits are defined as potential markers of psychopathy in children and adolescents. Previous studies with the most widely used instrument designed specifically to assess these traits, the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (ICU), have shown major methodological problems. For this reason, the purpose of the present study was to develop a valid and reliable test to assess callous-unemotional traits for the adolescent population free of the response biases social desirability (SD) and acquiescence (AC). In order to obtain responses free of these biases, we used SD item markers as well as content balanced items to identify a factor related to SD and AC, so that SD and AC effects can be removed from the individual scores on content factors. As well as the CU traits (unemotional, callousness, and uncaring scales), this new questionnaire also contains an additional scale for assessing antisocial behaviors. The test was administered to 719 adolescents between 13 and 19 years old. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis yielded the following expected four dimensions with a good fit: Unemotional, Callousness, Uncaring, and Antisocial Behavior. These scales also showed good psychometric properties with good reliability, and convergent, discriminant and criterion validity.

Response biases in simple decision making: Faster decision making, faster response execution, or both?

When people are biased to use one response more often than an alternative response in a decision task, they also make the preferred response more quickly. Sequential sampling models can accommodate this difference in response time (RT) by changing the relative amount of evidence that must accumulate to decide in favor of one versus the other response, but nondecision processes might also play a role, such as the amount of time between selecting and executing a response. We investigated the influence of decision and nondecision processes in two experiments. In Experiments 1a and 1b, arrows appeared on the screen, and participants were asked to move a joystick in the direction of the arrow or make a keypress as quickly as possible. Results showed that motor execution times were faster for expected directions than unexpected directions. In Experiments 2a and 2b, participants decided whether a high or low number of asterisks was displayed on the screen. Decision times were faster for the stimulus class that was more likely to appear, and this effect was larger when participants could anticipate both the likely stimulus class and the motor response needed to identify it than when they knew the likely stimulus class but the associated motor response changed probabilistically from trial to trial. These results show that both decision and nondecision factors contribute to bias effects on RT.

Retrospective Preevaluation-Postevaluation in Health Design.

BACKGROUND: Retrospective preevaluation-postevaluation (RPPEs) in health design is a methodology allowing designers and healthcare providers to evaluate the effectiveness of the enhancements to the care environment. PURPOSE: This article presents an overview of the nature of RPPE and addresses its usefulness in health design. METHODS: A description of the RPPE method with examples are provided to illustrate how these methods can be used to evaluate healthcare projects during and after the design and the implications to consider on patient, provider, and organizational outcomes. OUTCOMES: The RPPE process can be very useful when evaluating health design. It is imperative for design and healthcare professionals to use the RPPE methods to gain factual knowledge, skills, and/or attitudes of how the built environment influences a respondent's life, health, and illness and be able to translate these findings into effective healthcare designs.

Does comorbid anxiety counteract emotion recognition deficits in conduct disorder?

BACKGROUND: Previous research has reported altered emotion recognition in both conduct disorder (CD) and anxiety disorders (ADs) - but these effects appear to be of different kinds. Adolescents with CD often show a generalised pattern of deficits, while those with ADs show hypersensitivity to specific negative emotions. Although these conditions often cooccur, little is known regarding emotion recognition performance in comorbid CD+ADs. Here, we test the hypothesis that in the comorbid case, anxiety-related emotion hypersensitivity counteracts the emotion recognition deficits typically observed in CD. METHOD: We compared facial emotion recognition across four groups of adolescents aged 12-18 years: those with CD alone (n = 28), ADs alone (n = 23), cooccurring CD+ADs (n = 20) and typically developing controls (n = 28). The emotion recognition task we used systematically manipulated the emotional intensity of facial expressions as well as fixation location (eye, nose or mouth region). RESULTS: Conduct disorder was associated with a generalised impairment in emotion recognition; however, this may have been modulated by group differences in IQ. AD was associated with increased sensitivity to low-intensity happiness, disgust and sadness. In general, the comorbid CD+ADs group performed similarly to typically developing controls. CONCLUSIONS: Although CD alone was associated with emotion recognition impairments, ADs and comorbid CD+ADs were associated with normal or enhanced emotion recognition performance. The presence of comorbid ADs appeared to counteract the effects of CD, suggesting a potentially protective role, although future research should examine the contribution of IQ and gender to these effects.

Signal Detection Measures Cannot Distinguish Perceptual Biases from Response Biases.

A common conceptualization of signal detection theory (SDT) holds that if the effect of an experimental manipulation is truly perceptual, then it will necessarily be reflected in a change in d' rather than a change in the measure of response bias. Thus, if an experimental manipulation affects the measure of bias, but not d', then it is safe to conclude that the manipulation in question did not affect perception but instead affected the placement of the internal decision criterion. However, the opposite may be true: an effect on perception may affect measured bias while having no effect on d'. To illustrate this point, we expound how signal detection measures are calculated and show how all biases-including perceptual biases-can exert their effects on the criterion measure rather than on d'. While d' can provide evidence for a perceptual effect, an effect solely on the criterion measure can also arise from a perceptual effect. We further support this conclusion using simulations to demonstrate that the Müller-Lyer illusion, which is a classic visual illusion that creates a powerful perceptual effect on the apparent length of a line, influences the criterion measure without influencing d'. For discrimination experiments, SDT is effective at discriminating between sensitivity and bias but cannot by itself determine the underlying source of the bias, be it perceptual or response based.