Quantitative Psychology Commons^™

Inferential Procedures For Dominance Analysis Measures In Multiple Regression, Shuwen Tang

Theses and Dissertations

In order to better interpret a selected multiple regression model, researchers are often interested in whether a predictor is significantly more important than another or not. This study investigates the performance of the Normal-Theory based (asymptotic) confidence interval and bootstrap confidence intervals for predictors' dominance relationships using both normal and non-normal data. The results show that asymptotic confidence interval method is adequate to make inferences for comparing two general dominance measures when the distribution is multivariate normal or slightly non-normal and when the effect size is no less than 0.15 and the sample size is at least 100. However, the …

Psychometric Properties Of A Multichannel Battery For The Assessment Of Emotional Perception, William H. Krause

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Perceiving the emotions of others is an important, even critical, skill for success in social interactions. The lack of this skill has been associated with decreased social competence and poor interpersonal relationships (Shimokawa et al., 2001). It frequently co-occurs with psychopathology.

Furthermore, there is a large and rapidly growing literature examining the neural substrates of emotional processing. Studies have examined the processing of particular emotions, as well as how emotions conveyed through different modalities are processed.

The New York Emotion Battery (NYEB; Borod, Welkowitz, & Obler, 1992) includes tests for the perception of eight discrete emotions across three communication channels: …

Exploring The Various Interpretations Of "Test Bias", Russell Warne, Myeongsun Yoon, Chris Price

Russell T Warne

Test bias is a hotly debated topic in society, especially as it relates to diverse groups of examinees who often score low on standardized tests. However, the phrase “test bias” has a multitude of interpretations that many people are not aware of. In this article, we explain five different meanings of “test bias” and summarize the empirical and theoretical evidence related to each interpretation. The five meanings are as follows: (a) mean group differences, (b) differential predictive validity, (c) differential item functioning, (d) differing factor structures of tests, and (e) unequal consequences of test use for various groups. We explain …

Why We Disagree: Morality And Social Categorization, Nathan Christopher Carnes

Masters Theses

Recent research has identified important functional differences between Prescriptive morality (based in approach motivation) and Proscriptive morality (based in avoidance motivation). The purpose of the present research was to understand the consequences of these moralities applied at the group level for social categorization, especially in response to threat. I measured social categorization with a novel method in which participants categorized same-race and cross-race morphed faces. Social Justice (which is Prescriptive morality applied to the group) was associated with more inclusive social categorization under conditions of threat compared to a control condition. Social Order (which is Proscriptive morality applied to the …

Theories Of Reasoned Action And Planned Behavior As Models Of Condom Use: A Meta-Analysis, Dolores Albarracín, Blair Johnson, Martin Fishbein, Paige Muellerleile

Blair T. Johnson

No abstract provided.

The Structure Of Child And Adolescent Aggression: Confirmatory Factor Analysis Of A Brief Peer Conflict Scale, Justin Russell

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The importance of simultaneous consideration of forms and functions in youth measures of aggressive behavior is well established. Competing models have presented these highly interrelated constructs as either independent (e.g., reactive or overt) or paired factors (e.g., reactive and overt). The current study examines these models in the context of assessing the viability of a new self-report measure, the Peer Conflict Scale – 20 Item Version. Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on PCS 20 responses from 1,048 school-age youth living in the Gulf Coast region. Both models significantly improved upon one or two-factor alternatives, and demonstrated partial invariance across gender …

Developing A Multi-Group Moderated Model To Predict And Compare Commitment In Geographically Close And Long-Distance Relationships, Fredrick Andrew Eichler

Theses and Dissertations

Despite many recommendations to assess the role of the social exchange theory and the interdependence theory in long-distance relationships, few researchers have investigated if the roles of satisfaction, alternatives, and investments in a relationship influence commitment differently for individuals in long-distance relationships compared to individuals in geographically close relationships. I hypothesized that trust, desire for frequent sex, satisfaction, alternatives, and investment in the relationship have unique predictive relationships on commitment depending on relationship proximity and gender. In two studies, I first tested prior research investigating the role of negative affect on relationship commitment. I extended this research and found that …

Predicting High-Stakes Tests Of Math Achievement Using A Group-Administered Rti Instrument: Validating Skills Measured By The Monitoring Instructional Responsiveness: Math, Jeremy Thomas Coles

Doctoral Dissertations

Three universal screeners and nine progress monitoring probes from the Monitoring Instructional Responsiveness: Math (MIR:M), a silent, group-administered math assessment designed for implementation with an RTI Model, were administered to 223 fifth-grade students. The growth parameters of the overall MIR:M composite and two global composites (math calculation and math reasoning) identified significant variation in student growth, within significant linear and quadratic trajectories. However, there were significant differences in the nature of the growth trajectories that have applied educational implications. In addition, growth parameters across the three composites provided significant predictive potential when using the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) Achievement …

A Micro-Level Analysis Of Behavioral Dynamics In Parent-Child Synchrony, Kadie L. Ausherman

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study investigates parent-child synchrony, a multilevel construct that has not been operationalized in a precise or standardized way. Synchrony is frequently discussed theoretically, yet there still lacks a clear means of measuring it, even on the behavioral level. When parent-child synchrony is operationalized in a study, it is rarely analyzed in such a way that reflects the dyadic dynamics that unfold as the parent and child are interacting. The aim of this study is to operationalize parent-child synchrony in terms of the dyadic behavior patterns. An overview of the current literature with regard to synchrony as a multilevel construct …

Dif Analyses In Multilevel Data: Identification And Effects On Ability Estimates, Yao Wen

Theses and Dissertations

Fairness is an important issue in educational testing in that different groups of examinees should have equal probabilities of answering an item correctly, provided they have the same capabilities. Therefore, differential item functioning (DIF) analyses were developed due to the possibility of bias in cognitive or achievement tests. Data are multilevel structured in educational testing as students are nested within teachers who are nested within schools, and which may further be nested within districts. Although DIF analyses have been discussed for decades, they are rarely investigated in multilevel data. In this study, DIF analyses in multilevel data were investigated via …

Interactions Of Borderline Personality Disorder And Mood Disorders Over Ten Years, John G. Gunderson, Robert L. Stout, M. Tracie Shea, Carlos M. Grilo, John C. Markowitz, Leslie C. Morey, Charles A. Sanislow, Shirley Yen, Mary C. Zanarini, Alex S. Keuroghlian, Thomas H. Mcglashan, Andrew E. Skodol

Charles A. Sanislow, Ph.D.

Objective: To examine the relationship of borderline personality disorder (BPD) to mood disorders by using data from the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study on the reciprocal interactions of BPD with both depressive and bipolar disorders over the course of 10 years.

Method: The study included 223 BPD patients with DSM-IV–defined co-occurring major depressive disorder (MDD) (n = 161), bipolar I disorder (n = 34), and bipolar II disorder (n = 28) who were reliably and prospectively assessed over a period of 10 years between 1997 and 2009. Proportional hazards regression analyses were used to assess the effects of improvement or …

What We Thought We Knew: Intellectual Assessment Of Individuals Who Are Blind, Richard L. Sylvester Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

Throughout the history of intellectual assessment, research involving individuals who are blind has often been scarce. Currently, there are no intellectual assessment procedures based on the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory of intelligence available to individuals who are blind. CHC theory is considered to be the gold standard of intellectual assessment and many government and diagnostic policies rely upon CHC theory. The proposed research sought to extend the current reach of CHC theory to individuals who are blind by developing a new measure of tactile performance ability. The Tactile Assessment of Performance (TAP) was developed and administered to participants who were blind …

Hot And Bothered: The Role Of Arousal And Rejection Sensitivity In Dual Process Sexual Decision Making For Gay And Bisexual Men, H Jonathon Rendina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dual process theories of decision making acknowledge the functioning of two distinct yet simultaneous processes termed System 1 and System 2. While System 1 relies more heavily on automatic and affective processing, System 2 relies more heavily on effortful and cognitive processing. Over the past several decades, many lines of research have shown the importance of System 1 in decision making and several prominent social psychological theories of interpersonal behavior, such as rejection sensitivity, rely on this dual distinction between affective and cognitive processing. Despite the prominence of dual process theories in many areas of psychology, the role of System …

Improving Data Quality With Four Short Sentences: How An Honor Code Can Make The Difference During Data Collection, Alexander Scott Mckay

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Careless responders have a large impact on a study by causing issues such as Type II errors (failing to reject a false null hypothesis), which then waste researchers’ time and money. Research on careless responding has focused primarily on detecting and removing careless responders rather than on reducing careless responding before data collection begins. The purpose of the present study was to test the use of honor codes with or without the presentation of a picture of watchful eyes to increase self-awareness thereby reducing careless responding. Participants (N = 305) were randomly assigned to one of five honor code …

Prevalence, Types, Risk Factors, And Course Of Intimate Partner Violence In Appalachian Pregnant Women, Tifani Fletcher

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy can lead to a myriad of poor physical and psychological outcomes for both mother and child. There is a paucity of research examining IPV risk factors for rural pregnant women and on information regarding the course of the specific types of IPV throughout pregnancy. The current project was an investigation of the prevalence of IPV and IPV risk factors for different types of IPV in an Appalachian pregnant sample that contained women from both rural and nonrural locations (Study 1), and was an examination of the occurrence of any IPV and the different types …

Electrophysiological Cross-Modality Comparisons Of Infant Individual Differences In Holistic Processing And Selective Inhibition, Matthew Singh

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Bayes, Brains & Babies: Electrophysiology And Mathematics Of Infant Holistic Processing And Selective Inhibition, Matthew Singh

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of State Orientation On Emotion Dysregulation, Borderline Personality Disorder, And Nonsuicidal Self-Injury, Desiree Leboeuf-Davis

Doctoral Dissertations

The current study extends the application of Personality Systems Interactions (PSI) theory (Kuhl, 2000b) to the distinction between Nonsuicidal Self-injury (NSSI) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) by examining the effect of State Orientation (Kuhl, 1994) on emotion dysregulation, BPD, and NSSI. Participants were recruited using social media and internet-based snowball techniques. Participants were directed to a web-based survey consisting of a demographic questionnaire, the Action Control Scale -24 (ACS-24; Kuhl, 1994; Kuhl & Fuhrmann, 1998), the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS; Gratz & Roemer, 2004; Gratz and Roemer, 2008), the McLean Screening Instrument for Borderline Personality Disorder (MSI-BPD; Zanarini …

The Effects Of Religious Coping And Drinking To Cope On The Relationship Between Depressive Symptoms And Alcohol-Related Problems, Adrian J. Bravo

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The present research examined the moderating effect of religious coping (positive or negative) on the relationship between depressive symptoms and alcohol-related problems. Furthermore, the current study examined the moderating effects of positive and negative religious coping in the context of the confirmed mediation of drinking to cope on depression and alcohol related problems (i.e., moderated-mediation). The study consisted of 294 religious undergraduate student drinkers from a large southeastern university. The majority of participants identified themselves as Christian (n = 257, 87.4%), were female (n = 218, 74.1%), and reported a mean age of 21.85 (SD = 5.57) …

The Nature Of Conflict In Sport: Development And Validation Of The Group Conflict Questionnaire, Kyle F. Paradis

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of the present dissertation was to develop a questionnaire to assess intra-group conflict in sport teams. To this end, the current dissertation consisted of three phases which followed a logical progression that is typical in the questionnaire development process. A total of (N = 752) participants took part in the three phases (Phase 1: N = 10; Phase 2: N = 437; Phase 3: N = 305).

Phase 1 was a qualitative investigation of athletes’ (N = 10) perceptions of the nature of conflict in sport. This phase was undertaken to gain a better understanding of the conflict …

An Alternative To Cronbach's Alpha: An L-Moment-Based Measure Of Internal-Consistency Reliablilty, Todd C. Headrick, Yanyan Sheng

Todd Christopher Headrick

Data sets in the social and behavioral sciences are often small or heavy-tailed. Previous studies have demonstrated that small samples or leptokurtic distributions adversely affect the performance of Cronbach’s coefficient alpha. To address these concerns, we propose an alternative estimator of reliability based on L-comoments. The empirical results of this study demonstrate that when sample sizes are small and distributions are heavy-tailed that the proposed coefficient L-alpha has substantial advantages over the conventional Cronbach estimator of reliability in terms of relative bias and relative standard error.

Component Numeracy Skills And Decision Making, Saima Ghazal

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Numeracy—i.e., one’s practical understanding of mathematics in context—is one of the strongest predictors of people’s general decision making skill, independent of other cognitive abilities (e.g., intelligence, working memory, attentional control). Despite notable scientific progress on the nature of numeracy and decision making, the cognitive and decision sciences have yet to investigate individual differences in numeracy components (e.g., algebra versus probability). In this dissertation, I report on my efforts to develop new measurement technology and quantitative models of cognitive and decision skills. Analyses include the first known investigations of the relations between the major adult component numeracy skills and general decision …

A New Perspective On Visual Word Processing Efficiency, Joseph W. Houpt, James T. Townsend, Christopher Donkin

Joseph W. Houpt

As a fundamental part of our daily lives, visual word processing has received much attention in the psychological literature. Despite the well established advantage of perceiving letters in a word or in a pseudoword over letters alone or in random sequences using accuracy, a comparable effect using response times has been elusive. Some researchers continue to question whether the advantage due to word context is perceptual. We use the capacity coefficient, a well established, response time based measure of efficiency to provide evidence of word processing as a particularly efficient perceptual process to complement those results from the accuracy domain.

The Reliability And Validity Of The Thin Slice Technique: Observational Research On Video Recorded Medical Interactions, Tanina Suzanne Foster

Wayne State University Dissertations

The Reliability and Validity of the Thin Slice Technique: Observational Research on Video Recorded Medical Interactions

Introduction: Observational research using the thin slice technique has been routinely incorporated in observational research methods, however there is limited evidence supporting use of this technique compared to full interaction coding. The purpose of this study was to determine if this technique could be reliability coded, if ratings are consistent between the first, second and third slice, and if they are indeed representative of full interactions.

Methods: Three 30-second thin slices were sampled from the beginning, middle and end of a full-length video-recorded …

Validation Of The Item-Attribute Matrix In Timss-Mathematics Using Multiple Regression And The Lsdm, Lin Ma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For many cognitive diagnostic models, the item-attribute matrix (or Q-matrix) is an essential component which displays the relationship between items and their latent attributes or skills in knowledge and cognitive processes. However, it is a challenge to develop an effective Q-matrix.The purposes of this study were (1) to validate of the item-attribute matrix using two levels of attributes (Level 1 attributes and Level 2 sub-attributes), and (2) through retrofitting the diagnostic models to the mathematics test of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), to evaluate the construct validity of TIMSS mathematics assessment by comparing the results of …

Evaluation Of The Psychometric Properties Of Two Short Forms Of The Social Interaction Anxiety Scale And The Social Phobia Scale, Allura L. Le Blanc, Laura C. Bruce, Richard G. Heimberg, Debra A. Hope, Carlos Blanco, Franklin R. Schneier, Michael R. Liebowitz

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

The Social Interaction Anxiety Scale and Social Phobia Scale are widely used measures of social anxiety. Using data from individuals with social anxiety disorder (n = 435) and nonanxious controls (n = 86), we assessed the psychometric properties of two independently developed short forms of these scales. Indices of convergent and discriminant validity, diagnostic specificity, sensitivity to treatment, and readability were examined. Comparisons of the two sets of short forms to each other and the original long forms were conducted. Both sets of scales demonstrated adequate internal consistency in the patient sample, showed expected patterns of correlation with measures of …

University Commitment: Test Of A Three-Component Model, Brittany Davis

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

University commitment is critical to university success, as it positively impacts retention, as well as many other student attitudes and behaviors (Beil, Reisen, Zea, & Caplan, 1999; Tinto, 1987; Tinto, 2006; Woosley & Miller, 2009). Therefore, psychometrically sound measures of university commitment are of great importance to universities. The present study seeks to test the psychometric properties of a newly developed scale of university commitment. This study measured the internal consistency reliability, content validity, and construct validity of the newly created measure. Divergent validity was evaluated by comparing the new measure to the Perceived Academic Achievement Scale (Meagher, 2012) and …

Development Of The Involuntary Autobiographical Memory Questionnaire (Iamq), Song Hee Kang

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Teacher Support Mediates Concurrent And Longitudinal Associations Between Temperament And Mild Depressive Symptoms In Sixth Grade, Kathleen Moritz Rudasill, Patrick Pössel, Stephanie Winkeljohn Black, Kate Niehaus

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

The combination of changes occurring at the transition to middle school may be a catalyst for the onset of depressive symptoms, yet teacher support at this transition is protective. Research points to certain temperamental traits as risk factors for developing depressive symptoms. This study examines student reports of teacher support and teacher reports of student–teacher relationship (STR) quality as mediators of associations between child temperament (i.e. negative emotionality at age 4½ : and emotional reactivity in elementary grades) and depressive symptoms in sixth grade. Results indicate (a) negative emotionality predicted emotional reactivity and depressive symptoms; (b) emotional reactivity predicted depressive …

Using Above-Level Testing To Track Growth In Academic Achievement In Gifted Students, Russell Warne

Russell T Warne

Above-level testing is the practice of administering aptitude or academic achievement tests that are designed for typical students in higher grades or older age-groups to gifted or high-achieving students. Although widely accepted in gifted education, above-level testing has not been subject to careful psychometric scrutiny. In this study, I examine reliability data, growth trajectories, distributions, and group differences of above-level test scores obtained from the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills and Iowa Tests of Educational Development. Two hundred twenty-four middle school students participated in this study. All participants were tested at least 1 time for an overall total of 435 …