Psychology Commons^™

Exploring Usability In Exercise Interventions: From Conceptualization To Measurement And Application, Anne Inger Mørtvedt

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Exercise interventions hold promise for preventing and treating numerous conditions, diseases, and injuries. However, these interventions will only be effective if they are being used. Unfortunately, uptake and adherence to prescribed exercise and physical activity guidelines are insufficient. Some reasons for this include lack of knowledge, resources, flexibility, and enjoyment. Exercise program developers need to not only consider the effectiveness of the program during the development phase, but also involve end-users and receive feedback on program usability to determine likelihood of uptake and adoption. Usability testing can be used to detect barriers to use and implementation likelihood but has not …

Functional Cynicism, Michelle Fried

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Trait cynicism, or “cynical hostility” as measured by the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory’s Cook-Medley Scale, is defined and studied as characteristics associated with psychopathology, interpersonal conflict, and negative health outcomes including heart disease and cognitive decline. Likewise, “organizational cynicism” is operationalized in industrial/organizational psychology for the purpose of describing and identifying an undesirable employee type in the workplace. This research proposes an alternative assessment. It reconnects cynicism with its roots in ancient philosophy by asking if cynical attitudes, despite their negative valence ascribed in the modern literature and conventional opinion, may serve a practical purpose. This study of Functional Cynicism …

Indirect Aggression And Victimization: Investigating Instrument Psychometrics, Gender Differences, And Its Relationship To Social Information Processing, Taylor Steeves

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The study of indirect bullying behaviors, relational aggression and social aggression, has been of theoretical importance and interest to researchers and psychologists within the last few decades. In this investigation, using a convenience sample of 451 late adolescents attending a private university in the mid-Atlantic U.S., I examined the factor structure of two measures of indirect bullying, the Young Adult Social Behavior Scale – Victim (YASB-V) and the Young Adult Social Behavior Scale – Perpetrator (YASB-P). Using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), I found that the YASB-V comprised a four-factor model, differing from the model that had been identified in the …

Measurement Invariance Of Impact In Bilingual And Monolingual High School Athletes, Hana Cecilia Kuwabara

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Given the reported negative consequences of sport related concussion (SRC), establishing the validity of concussion management tools is essential if they are used to determine the severity of concussion, track recovery or decline, implement effective interventions, and assist in return-to-play decision making. Previous research has found cognitive and symptoms differences on ImPACT, the most widely used SRC assessment measure, between monolingual and bilingual student athletes. Before further investigation of these differences can occur, measurement invariance of ImPACT must be established to ensure that differences are not attributable to measurement error. The current study has two aims: 1) to replicate a …

The Psychopathology Circumplex+: A Novel Conceptualization Of Psychopathology And Associated Measure, Edward A. Smith

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Fearless Dominance (FD) and Impulsive Antisociality (IA) are two personality traits often used in the study of psychopathic personality. FD is characterized by a lack of empathy, resilience to stress, and social potency, while IA is marked by impulsivity, selfishness, and manipulativeness. The current trio of studies sought to expand the use of FD and IA to assess psychopathology more generally. Study 1 consisted of a meta-analysis of all the relationships between FD/IA and various forms of psychopathology. Results affirmed that FD and IA each correlate with a variety of different psychological disorders, each to varying degrees of magnitude, but …

Psychometric Validation Of The Team Resilience Inventory, Alexander J. Mcgregor 6971928

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Work teams frequently face adversities that may affect group processes and ultimately lead to a loss of performance. Despite a large literature on the characteristics of high-performance work teams, we know little about the processes by which teams resist, persist through, adapt to, recover from, or otherwise be resilient to challenges that they encounter. In part, this is due to the lack of a psychometrically sound and well-validated measure for team resilience; how work teams collectively respond to and ‘bounce back’ from adversities. The present dissertation project addresses this need in the literature through the development and validation of the …

A Novel Examination Of None-Of-The-Above As It Influences Examinee Item Responses, Kathryn N. Thompson

Dissertations, 2020-current

It is imperative to collect validity evidence prior to interpreting and using test scores. During the process of collecting validity evidence, test developers should consider whether test scores are contaminated by sources of extraneous information. This is referred to as construct irrelevant variance, or the “degree to which test scores are affected by processes that are extraneous to the test’s intended purpose” (AERA et al., 2014, p. 12). One possible source of construct irrelevant variance is violating item-writing guidelines, such as to “avoid the use of none-of-the-above” in multiple-choice items (Rodriguez, 2016, p. 268).

Numerous studies have been conducted with …

Trait Sadism In Bdsm Practitioners And Non-Practitioners, Marley Russell

Psychology ETDs

Sadism is an elusive construct within psychology. Multiple types are studied without clear psychometric or theoretical distinctions, and operationalizations of these respective sub-constructs lack validity. This study explores the empirical distinction between two sadism types: consensual sexual sadism (i.e. in the context of BDSM) and trait sadism. Trait sadism is widely synonymized with “everyday sadism”, but here conceptualized as a higher-order construct encompassing both everyday and a novel “prosocial sadism”. I develop and pilot the BDSM Identities and Behaviors (BIB) checklist in a sample of BDSM practitioners. I then compare those practitioners to non-practitioners on trait sadism and dark triad …

The Structure Of Working Memory: A Review And New View Of Psychometric Models, Kevin Pablo Rosales

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Beginning in the 1970s, a great deal of research in cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, psychometrics, and cognitive neuroscience has investigated the structure and function of working memory (WM), defined as the ability to actively maintain and manipulate information in the service of complex cognition (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). It is well established that WM is a limited capacity system and individual differences in WM capacity are strongly associated with important cognitive abilities and outcomes, such as general intelligence (Engle et al., 1999) and academic achievement (Swanson & Berninger, 1996; Ramirez et al., 2013). For this reason, WM is a central …

Using A Single Measure To Assess Adherence And Differentiation In Family Therapy For Adolescent Externalizing Problems, Stephanie Violante

Theses and Dissertations

Family therapy is considered a well-established treatment approach for adolescent externalizing problems; however, research examining its effectiveness when delivered in routine practice settings has produced mixed results. The accurate interpretation of these inconsistent results requires an understanding of what therapeutic techniques were delivered, including those that were prescribed (i.e., adherence) and those that were non-prescribed (i.e., differentiation), suggesting the need for a measure that can concurrently assess treatment adherence and differentiation. The current study examined the extent to which an observational measure of an array of therapeutic techniques for youth emotional and behavioral problems (the Therapy Process Observational Coding System …

Living In The Fast Lane: The Role Of Temporal Processing In Adhd Risk-Taking Behaviors, Ashley Schiros

Theses - ALL

Background: Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder, prevalent in the college student population, that is associated with temporal processing deficits and functional impairments, namely engagement in risky behaviors (ERB; e.g., binge drinking). An existing theoretical framework purposes that aberrant temporal processing and subjective experience of time passing slowly, experienced in individuals with a fast internal clock (e.g., individuals with ADHD), increases the likelihood of ERB. The primary aim of this project is to improve our understanding of the relationship between objective temporal processing deficits and the subjective experience of time passage among people with elevated ADHD symptoms. Method: …

Development Of A Measure Of Physical Distancing: The O'Sickey Distancing Test, Anthony J. O'Sickey

Psychology ETDs

Introduction: Covid-19 has swept the globe and has disproportionately affected the United States with over 600,000 deaths in just over one year. The Centers for Disease Control recommendations for reducing the spread of Covid-19 have focused on physical distancing (PD), the practice of maintaining a distance greater than 6 feet from individuals not in the same household. When employed, this health behavior has been found to reduce the incidence of Covid-19. A review of the measurement literature evaluating PD indicates that PD has been measured at the community level via GPS, using proxy measures of the behavior, or as a …

Creating A Short, Public-Domain Version Of The Cpai-2: Using An Algorithmic Approach To Develop Public-Domain Measures Of Indigenous Personality Traits, Mukhunth Raghavan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study we aimed to create a short, public-domain analogue of the Cross-Cultural (Chinese) Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI-2; F. M. Cheung et al., 1996). Emic (culture-specific) traits measured by the CPAI-2 are purportedly specific to the Chinese culture and argued to not be fully captured by the consensus Big Five personality trait taxonomy. Research suggests that CPAI-2 traits may have unique predictive power, especially in non-Western contexts. However, research has been hampered by several limitations of the measure. The inventory is proprietary and long, with 341 items forming 28 scales and four factors. Cross-cultural personality research would benefit from …

Bridging Psychometric And Cognitive Models Of (General) Intelligence: An Investigation Based On Process Overlap Theory, Han Hao

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Human intelligence has been scientifically investigated as a psychological construct for over a century but there has not been a universally accepted definition or theory. One cause of this problem is that traditional theories attempt to explain the robust findings in cognitive ability testing, such as the positive manifold, from two different perspectives: psychometric or cognitive. Both approaches have their own limitations and are sometimes incompatible with each other. Therefore, contemporary theories of intelligence have been developed to provide a more unified perspective by combining both types of approaches, allowing the psychometric structure of cognitive abilities to be represented and …

Good Risk Or Bad Risk: Development Of A Holistic Assessment Of Risk Perception, Joan C. Craig

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of the current project was to create a measurement tool that could be used to assess all aspects of risk perception with one measure. There is a wide variety of risk-perception measures currently available; however, the vast majority of these measures assess a very specific risky activity, and many only assess a person’s perception of the possible negative consequences from the risk.

There are notable exceptions, such as measures that assess risk in various domains (e.g., DOSPERT scale; Weber et al., 2002) and assess perception of possible benefits (e.g., Fromme et al., 1997). There has also been research …

Presumed Illegal Microaggressive Experience (Prime): A Microaggression Targeting Latinx Individuals, Aldo M. Barrita

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In the US, people of color (PoC) are consistently the targets of microaggressions, a form of everyday racism (Pierce et al., 1977; Chavez, 2013) manifested in brief, commonplace, daily slights and indignities (Sue et al., 2007). After the 2016 elections, Americans immediately reported an increase in social tensions across racial groups (Pew Research, 2017). Latinxs, in particular, reported a steep rise in experiences with racial and ethnic discrimination (Gomez & Perez Huber, 2019; Jones et al., 2019), particularly around the context of immigration status (Santos et al., 2021). No previous research, however, has explored the experience of assumed illegality based …

A Psychometric Evaluation Of The Best In Class Adherence And Competence Scale, Katrina A. Markowicz

Theses and Dissertations

It is critical to utilize treatment integrity instruments to support the evaluation of evidence-based programs in early classroom contexts. However, in the early childhood field, guidelines for collecting treatment integrity data are underdeveloped. Consequently, most treatment integrity instruments employed in the field solely assess adherence, vary in design features and have little psychometric evidence supporting their use. As such, this represents a gap in the field that might slow efforts to implement evidence-based programs. The current study examines the score reliability and validity of an observational treatment integrity instrument (The BEST in CLASS Adherence and Competence Scale [BiCACS]; Sutherland et …

Psychometric Evaluation Of Genetic Literacy Instruments In A National Sample, Jamey T. Brumbaugh

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The concept of genetic literacy continues to grow in clinical and social significance. Whether transforming current healthcare practices or raising questions about genetically-modified foods, genetic information and technologies are primed to further influence people’s lives. There is a growing need to understand how genetic literacy is currently assessed in order to inform and improve future test development. This study aimed to investigate the assessment of genetic literacy by psychometrically examining three contemporary genetic literacy instruments (i.e., Genetic Knowledge Survey, International Genetic Literacy and Attitudes Survey (iGLAS-GK), and University of North Carolina Genomic Knowledge Scale (UNC-GKS). Psychometric properties, including internal consistency …

The Development And Validation Of The Supportive Other Experiences Questionnaire: Integrating The Perspectives Of The Social Support Provider After Traumatic Injury, Katherine Ann Van Stolk-Cooke

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Social support is considered to be a protective factor against the development of PTSD after trauma. However, examinations of the social support-PTSD relationship have relied primarily on the self-reports of trauma-exposed individuals to the exclusion of their support providers. A new measure, the Supportive Other Experiences Questionnaire (SOEQ) was developed based on social support theory, prior research and psychometrics in order to capture important components of social support from the perspective of the support provider. Concerned Significant Others (CSOs) recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform who served as support providers to a traumatically injured romantic partner were recruited to …

Validity And Diagnostic Accuracy Of An Adhd Symptom Rating Scale For Identifying Adults With Adhd, Stacy Jean Graves

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Specific rating scales of ADHD symptomatology are often included in neuropsychological assessments evaluating adults diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The Barkley Adult ADHD Rating Scale-IV (BAARS-IV) is a widely used symptom rating scale that includes four questionnaires: self-report current, self-report childhood, other-report current, and other-report childhood. In addition to ADHD symptoms, each of the forms include items that assess functional impact and developmental history of symptomatology. While similar symptom rating scales have been found to have high validity and diagnostic utility in children, it is unclear the extent to which the BAARS-IV shares substantial common variance with other …

Assessment Instruments And Basic Personality Underpinnings Of Hypersexuality, Stephanie L. Montgomery-Graham

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Despite rejection of the Hypersexual Disorder (HD) diagnosis from DSM-5, individuals continue to present clinically with feelings of out-of-control sexual behaviour, clinicians continue to treat “sexual addiction,” and researchers continue to study HD-type symptomology. To further investigation of the HD construct, Levaque and colleagues (2016) used common HD assessment measures and found that between 16.7% and 37.8% of young adult males met clinically significant scores for HD. Phase one of this dissertation replicated the surprising finding in a North American community sample and furthered the research by testing the assessment tool used in DSM-5 HD field trials, and the first …

Measuring Outcome Expectations In Academic Persistence, Michael Kozlowski

Theses and Dissertations

Academic persistence, or a student’s decision to leave an institution of higher education, has remained an inveterate puzzle to researchers, theoreticians, institutions, and counselors. Despite a large body of theoretical and empirical literature, the rate at which students leave institutions of higher education has remained stable over the past 50 years. The discipline of counseling psychology has a long tradition of investigating academic persistence from a psychological perspective. Earlier investigations in counseling psychology focused on identifying psychopathological traits, cognitive abilities, and contextual factors associated with a student’s decision to leave. These investigations were met with a sociological reaction that has …

A Psychometric Evaluation Of Computerized Attention Measures In Young Children With Neurofibromatosis Type 1, Sara Katharine Pardej

Theses and Dissertations

Children with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) often demonstrate difficulties with attention and executive functioning that can be evident even starting at a young age. Despite this consistent finding in the literature, there has been no research to determine which measures of attention are most suitable for use with children with NF1. Recently, there have been several computerized measures of attention and executive abilities that have become available to researchers and clinicians. This study explored the National Institute of Health Toolbox Flanker, Dimensional Change Card Sort, and List Sort Working Memory; Cogstate Identification; and Conners Kiddie Continuous Performance Test, second edition …

Neural Mechanisms Of Cognitive Individual Difference: An Investigation Of The Human Connectome Project, Shelly Renee Cooper

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Considering individual differences in task activation functional magnetic resonance imaging (t-fMRI) can be challenging because they may arise from variability in activity in brain regions, in the tasks themselves, or some combination thereof. Delineating sources of between-subjects variance is particularly important for cognitive control where task goals are at the forefront. Here we applied structural equation modeling (SEM) to the Human Connectome Project to examine if activity could be partitioned into separable brain and task individual difference dimensions. A series of SEMs were defined with varying numbers of latent factors, where the inputs were parcels of two cognitive control-related brain …

Does Extrinsic Motivation Affect Creativity Within Diverse Teams?, Gitanjali K. Viswanathan

Honors Theses

This study analyzes the relationship between extrinsic motivation and creativity in teams. The moderation effect of functionality, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and diversity within a team is also considered. A survey was constructed and distributed to students within Sections 1 and 6 of the course Principles of Management at The University of Mississippi. Survey data were collected from 77 respondents and used for hierarchical regression and moderation analysis. The results of this study do not support extrinsic motivation as a significant predictor of creativity. Functionality, agreeableness, and conscientiousness each demonstrate a separate, significant interaction effect with extrinsic motivation. However, …

Can Ratings Of Item Location Enhance Statistical Item Parameter Estimation? Extending The Feasibility Of Unfolding Irt Models, Michael Mckenna

Dissertations

Research and development of modern psychometric methods such as item response theory have drastically changed the way we understand and carry out the measurement of psychological constructs. Despite this, there has been relatively little adoption by psychological researchers to incorporate these methods into their research. While multiple explanations are surely valid, one oft stated reason is the large sample size requirements of these methods. The sample size requirements of item response theory are needed so that effective estimation of item parameters can be carried out. In an attempt to make these modern measurement methods more accessible and feasible to psychological …

Psychometric Analyses Of A Comprehensive Neuropsychological Battery For Retired Nfl Players, Kimberly Ethridge Fitzgibbon

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined psychometric properties of the NFL Concussion Battery used to examine neuropsychological functioning in retired NFL players who were part of the NFL’s concussion settlement. This battery assesses multiple areas of cognitive functioning; executive functioning, language, processing speed, attention and memory. The study included 117 participants who were male with at least 16 years of education. The sample was 75.9% African-American and average age was 47. All participants completed the entire battery and passed the majority of effort measures. Those that did not pass the majority of effort measures or complete the entire battery were excluded.

T-test analyses …

The Reliability Of Single-Item Assessments, Sijun Zhang

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Single-item assessments have become more popular recently in distinct areas, even though there is no consensus about whether they are sufficiently reliable. Researchers have developed methods to estimate the reliability of single-item assessments, some are based on factor analysis (method FA), correction for attenuation (method CA), and others employ Molenaar and Sijtsma’s theory (method MS), coefficient λ6 (method λ6), or latent class model (method LCRC). However, no empirical study has investigated which method estimates the reliability of single-item assessment most precisely. This study investigated this question via a simulation study. To represent assessments as found in practice, the simulation study …

Measurement Of Defusion: Further Validation Of The Drexel Defusion Scale, Christopher A. Briggs

Dissertations

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) seeks to develop psychological flexibility through the engagement of the six interrelated processes. Four processes employ mindfulness and acceptance strategies and consist of acceptance, defusion, present moment awareness, and the contextualized self. Two other processes, values and committed action, are grouped with present moment awareness and the contextualized self and are termed behavior change strategies. One issue encountered by contemporary behavioral approaches in general, and ACT in particular, is the measurement of the proposed processes. Measurement is complicated by the functional nature of some of the repertoires described making the development of instruments for assessment …

Improving The Sensitivity Of The Vrin-R Scale On The Mmpi-A-Rf, Stefan E. Latulip

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

When respondents to self-report measures fail to answer in accordance with item content it distorts the accuracy of obtained test scores, degrading the ability of clinicians to use results to make accurate diagnoses and recommendations. The Variable Response Inconsistency (VRIN) scale was created for the MMPI-2 and was later revised as the VRIN-r scale for the MMPI-2-RF and MMPI-A-RF in order to detect and invalidate protocols over saturated with random responding. Analyses conducted by Pitta (2016) revealed that the VRIN-r scale for the MMPI-A-RF was not ideally sensitive to the detection of random responding in protocols. This study explored adding …