Quantitative Psychology Commons^™

Detecting Careless Cases In Practice Tests, Steven Nydick

Chinese/English Journal of Educational Measurement and Evaluation | 教育测量与评估双语期刊

In this paper, we present a novel method for detecting careless responses in a low-stakes practice exam using machine learning models. Rather than classifying test-taker responses as careless based on model fit statistics or knowledge of truth, we built a model to predict significant changes in test scores between a practice test and an official test based on attributes of practice test items. We extracted features from practice test items using hypotheses about how careless test takers respond to items and cross-validated model performance to optimize out-of-sample predictions and reduce heteroscedasticity when predicting the closest official test. All analyses use …

Critical Transitions In Mental Health: Van Gogh Case Study, Anna Singley

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.

The Effectiveness Of Computerized Neurofeedback As An Accompanying Or Alternative Therapeutic Intervention For Pharmacological Treatment In Improving Attention And Other Symptoms For Children With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Adhd), Eqbal Z. Darandari Phd, Nouf F. Alsultan

International Journal for Research in Education

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a treatment program using computerized neuro-feedback in improving attention for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). To achieve the aim of the study, the computerized neurofeedback program was applied to (56) children diagnosed with (ADHD), aged between (7-11) years. They were distributed into four groups: the first group was subjected to combined intervention (neurofeedback & pharmacological treatment), the second group was subjected to (neurofeedback only), while the third group was exposed to the intervention using (pharmacological treatment only), and the fourth group was (not exposed to any intervention). Test of Variables …

A Psychometric Analysis Of Natural Language Inference Using Transformer Language Models, Antonio Laverghetta Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Large language models (LLMs) are poised to transform both academia and industry. But the excitement around these generative AIs has also been met with concern for the true extent of their capabilities. This dissertation helps to address these questions by examining the capabilities of LLMs using the tools of psychometrics. We focus on analyzing the capabilities of LLMs on the task of natural language inference (NLI), a foundational benchmark often used to evaluate new models. We demonstrate that LLMs can reliably predict the psychometric properties of NLI items were those items administered to humans. Through a series of experiments, we …

Psy 703: Quantitative Methods In Psychology I, Andrew Hales Ph.D.

GMAS Course Syllabi

No abstract provided.

A New Method To Determine The Posterior Distribution Of Coefficient Alpha, John Mart V. Delosreyes

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

There is a focus within the behavioral/social sciences on non-physical, psychological constructs (i.e., constructs). These constructs are indirectly measured using measurement instruments that consist of questions that capture the manifestations of these constructs. The indirect nature of measuring constructs results in a need of ensuring that measurement instruments are reliable. The most popular statistic used to estimate reliability is coefficient alpha as it is easy to compute and has properties that make it desirable to use. Coefficient alpha’s popularity has resulted in a wide breadth of research into its qualities. Notably, research about coefficient alpha’s distribution has led to developments …

Examining The Relationship Between Counselor Professional Identity And Burnout, Jessica Gaul

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study examines counselor professional identity and burnout for clinical mental health counselors. The population of focus included licensed or license-eligible Clinical Mental Health Counselors, who were post-grad (N=53). Participants then completed the Professional Identity Scale in Counseling - Short Form and the Maslach Burnout Inventory–Human Services Survey. When examining the findings regarding the relationship between Counselor Professional Identity and Burnout for this study, the initial observation revealed the validity and applicability of the MBI-HSS to clinical mental health counselors. Though a relationship between Burnout and Counselor Professional Identity was not identified, relationships between sub-scale items were noteworthy. Implications for …

Recentering Psych Stats, Lynette Bikos

Faculty Open Access Books

To center a variable in regression means to set its value at zero and interpret all other values in relation to this reference point. Regarding race and gender, researchers often center male and White at zero. Further, it is typical that research vignettes in statistics textbooks are similarly seated in a White, Western (frequently U.S.), heteronormative, framework. ReCentering Psych Stats seeks to provide statistics training for psychology students (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral) in a socially and culturally responsive way. All lessons use the open-source statistics program, R (and its associated packages). Each chapter includes a screencast lesson, features a workflow …

Measurement Invariance And The Influence Of Psychosocial Factors In Reporting Subjective Cognition Across Race/Ethnicity, Erika A. Pugh

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The detection of cognitive decline is crucial for early intervention and management. However, there is a lack of research on detecting early cognitive decline and measuring bias in instruments among African Americans (AAs), who are at a heightened risk for dementia development. Additionally, the impact of psychosocial factors on perceived cognitive efficacy in this population is not well understood. Therefore, this study aimed to assess measurement bias in a measure of subjective memory concerns (SMC) among older AA adults, examine ethnoracial differences in the relationship between mood-related factors and SMC, and explore the impact of psychosocial variables on the report …

The Appropriateness Of Outlier Exclusion Approaches Depends On The Expected Contamination: Commentary On André (2022), Daniel Villanova

Marketing Faculty Publications and Presentations

In a recent article, André (2022) addressed the decision to exclude outliers using a threshold across conditions or within conditions and offered a clear recommendation to avoid within-conditions exclusions because of the possibility for large false-positive inflation. In this commentary, I note that André’s simulations did not include the situation for which within-conditions exclusion has previously been recommended—when across-conditions exclusion would exacerbate selection bias. Examining test performance in this situation confirms the recommendation for within-conditions exclusion in such a circumstance. Critically, the suitability of exclusion criteria must be considered in relationship to assumptions about data-generating mechanisms.

Average Or Outlier? Introductory Statistics Adjunct Instructors’ Beliefs, Practices, And Experiences, Samantha Estrada Aguilera, Erica Martinez

The Qualitative Report

In recent years, the adjunct faculty phenomenon has grown steadily. This research focused on adjunct instructors teaching introductory statistics courses. The purpose of the study was to give a voice to adjunct instructors by allowing them to describe their experiences teaching statistics. We conducted a qualitative study with 15 adjunct instructors of introductory statistics through semi-structured interviews. The participants came from several fields: psychology, nursing, and business, among others. Thematic analysis was used to find themes of statistical anxiety, use of technology in the classroom, lack of curriculum flexibility, and connection to the host institution. Our findings can inform institutions …

Evidence-Based Practices And Self-Efficacy: A Quantitative Study Of Mental Health Counselors Treating Clients With Substance Use Disorder, Carl Bastien

Dissertations

Substance use disorder affects a substantial number of individuals in the United States. The specific problem of this research is that it was not known to what extent their use of evidence-based practices is driven by their sense of self-efficacy. The purpose of this quantitative correlational research was to examine to what extent the use of evidence-based practices covary with a sense of self-efficacy for mental health counselors treating individuals diagnosed with a substance use disorder. The study population was 121 mental health counselors who specialized in substance use disorder treatment who completed a digital survey. The study findings did …

The Standards Will Never Be Enough: A Racial Justice Extension, Mya Poe, Maria Elena Oliveri, Norbert Elliot

Buros Center: Professional Staff Publications

Since 1952, the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing has provided criteria for developing and evaluating educational and psychological tests and testing practice. Yet, we argue that the foundations, operations, and applications in the Standards are no longer sufficient to meet the current U.S. testing demands for fairness for all test takers. We propose racial justice extensions as principled ways to extend the Standards, through intentional actions focused on race and targeted at educational policies, processes, and outcomes in specific settings. To inform these extensions, we focus on four social-justice concepts: intersectionality derived from Black Feminist Theory; responsibility derived …

Comparative Analysis Between Physical Activity Affect And Discrete Emotions In College Students, Kelly L. Simonton, Timothy M. Dasinger, Alex C. Garn

International Journal of Physical Activity and Health

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate empirical distinctness and overlap between physical activity (PA) affect and emotions as well as potential unique relationships with PA beliefs and behaviors. Specifically, researchers wanted to explore the level of shared variance amongst discrete emotions and affect, which in effect tested the jingle-jangle fallacy that can be present in psychometric evaluation of related constructs.

Participants: College students (N=519; Mage= 20.47) enrolled in PA courses at two universities in the Southeastern United States completed questionnaires concerning their PA related emotions, affect, self-efficacy, and self-reported PA.

Methods: …

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 …

Using Irtrees To Account For Response Style Effects Between Item Formats, Stephanie Leroy

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Response styles are consistent person-traits that are defined as the tendency to systematically select responses unrelated to the construct being measured (Paulhus, 1991). Response styles introduce construct-irrelevant variance that distorts observed scores on a measure and biases interpretation of the data. The current study looks at midpoint response style (MRS) and extreme response style (ERS). MRS is the tendency to select the midpoint of a rating scale, while ERS is the tendency to select the endpoints of a rating scale. Previous research sought to either account for response style effects or prevemt them – the current study does both. To …

Double Dosing: Investigating The Utility Of Multiple Priming Questions On Test-Taking Motivation, Mara Mcfadden

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Priming examinees with questions about intended effort prior to testing has been shown to significantly increase examinee expended effort via self-reported effort and response-time effort. However, this question-behavior effect seems to wear off later in a testing session, specifically when a test is given second in the session. I examined whether administering a second “dose” of the question-behavior effect could combat the decrease in examinee effort later in a testing session. To evaluate whether “double dosing” could increase examinee effort later in a testing session, I randomly assigned examinees to one of three question conditions prior to completing two low-stakes …

College-Related Stress And Substance Use: Experiences Of Honors And Non-Honors Students, Melanie Fischer

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Although there is a wealth of research knowledge related to risk behavior engagement of the general student population, there is less specifically reported about honors students. To address this gap in research, non-honors and honors students were surveyed to determine possible differences in risk behavior engagement. Students were recruited through the East Tennessee State University psychology subject pool and via direct email messages to an honors student-specific listserv. We hypothesized that honors students would have differences in terms of GPA and number of credit hours, endorse more substance use and have more perceived stress compared to non-honors students. The survey …

Attitudes Towards Mental Health, Spiritual Seeking, And Well-Being, David Mitchell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Religion plays a crucial role in many peoples’ lives, shaping the way they interact with the world and react to stressors. The Relational Spirituality Model (Sandage & Shults, 2007) posits that individuals’ relationship with God resembles humans’ relationships with one another. That is, relationships consist of intimacy and closeness as well as independence and time away from each other, otherwise known as dwelling and seeking. Previous literature has analyzed the relationship between spiritual coping and well-being, yet none have analyzed the relationship between spiritual seeking and overall well-being using attitudes towards mental health as a moderator. Participants were 84 undergraduate …

Many-Facet Rasch Designs: How Should Raters Be Assigned To Examinees?, Christine E. Demars, Yelisey A. Shapovalov, John D. Hathcoat

Department of Graduate Psychology - Faculty Scholarship

In Facets models, raters should be connected, and there are multiple ways to connect raters. Keeping the number of ratings constant and two raters scoring each examinee, the standard error of both rater severity and examinee ability was higher when raters scored one examinee in common with many different raters than when they scored many examinees in common with two raters. However, the differences were small, especially for the standard error of examinee ability. Alternatively, when only a subset of examinees were scored by two or more raters, the smallest standard errors were achieved when all raters scored a common …

Psyc 704: Quantitative Methods In Psychology Ii, Joseph D. Wellman Ph.D.

GMAS Course Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Towards Scalable Mental Health: Leveraging Digital Tools In Combination With Computational Modeling To Aid In Treatment And Assessment Of Major Depressive Disorder, Matthew D. Nemesure

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a debilitating disorder that impacts the lives of nearly 280 million individuals worldwide, representing 5% of the overall adult population. Unfortunately, these statistics have been both trending upward and are also likely an underestimate. This can be primarily attributed to lack of screening paired with a lack of providers. Worldwide, there are roughly 450 individuals living with MDD per mental health care provider. Adding to this burden, approximately half of affected individuals that do receive care of any kind will fail to remain in remission. The goal of this thesis work is to leverage statistical …

Masterchef Contestant To Social Media Influencer: Do Men And Women Differ In Pursuing Prestige?, Jada Thomas, Robert Deaner

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

The male show-off hypothesis claims that men are more likely than women to show off their abilities and publicly compete. However, the male show-off hypothesis has yet to be tested in a domain where both men and women are consistently involved, such as cooking. To examine showing off and cooking, we assessed the social media behavior of MasterChef reality program contestants both in the U.S. and Australia. We focused on 98 contestants from MasterChef U.S. (m = 52 & f = 46) and 107 contestants from MasterChef Australia (m = 45 & f = 62). For each contestant, we examined …

Chatgpt As Metamorphosis Designer For The Future Of Artificial Intelligence (Ai): A Conceptual Investigation, Amarjit Kumar Singh (Library Assistant), Dr. Pankaj Mathur (Deputy Librarian)

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this research paper is to explore ChatGPT’s potential as an innovative designer tool for the future development of artificial intelligence. Specifically, this conceptual investigation aims to analyze ChatGPT’s capabilities as a tool for designing and developing near about human intelligent systems for futuristic used and developed in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Also with the helps of this paper, researchers are analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of ChatGPT as a tool, and identify possible areas for improvement in its development and implementation. This investigation focused on the various features and functions of ChatGPT that …

Affective Depression Mediates Ptsd To Suicide In A Sample Of Treatment-Seeking First Responders, James Whitworth, Jeanine Galusha, Jose Carbajal, Warren Ponder, Donna Schuman

Faculty Publications

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the associations of comorbid

posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), affective or somatic depression, and

suicide among first responders (FRs). Method: We used baseline data from

FRs (N = 232) who sought services at a nonprofit mental health agency specializing

in treating trauma exposed FRs. We conducted two PROCESS simple

mediation models with PTSD as the predictor, affective depression and somatic

depression as the mediators, and suicidality as the dependent variable.

Results: Affective depression significantly mediated the relationship between

PTSD and suicidality, whereas somatic depression did not. The direct effect …

Gottman Processes And Couple Outcomes While Navigating Infertility, Clayton Brigance

Dissertations

Infertility remains one of the most difficult relational contexts for couples. However, some research suggests that some couples actually increase their overall satisfaction in their relationship through infertility due to a deeply shared emotional experience. To the knowledge of the author of this dissertation, no studies exist which explain how couples arrive at their relational outcomes through the experience of infertility. These studies within this dissertation add to the present literature by explaining how couples may arrive at their relational outcome through the lens of Gottman Method Couple Therapy (GMCT). For both studies presented here, 902 participants were recruited through …

Using Bayesian Generalized Structural Equation Modeling To Analyze Latent Agreement, Sydne T. Mccluskey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Rater comparison analysis is commonly necessary in the social sciences. Conventional approaches to the problem generally focus on calculation of agreement statistics, which provide useful but incomplete information about rater agreement. Importantly, one-number agreement statistics give no indication regarding the nature of disagreements, nor do they distinguish between agreement on presence versus absence of a state or trait. Latent variable models can address both problems, as well as overcoming other well-documented limitations of agreement statistics (e.g., sample dependence, inappropriate population assumptions). Whether raters exactly agree is usually not the question of interest – researchers almost never care whether the difference …

Does Cleft Repair Surgery Restore Normal Visual And Neural Responses To Infant Faces?, Rachael Leanne Kee

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Infant faces readily capture our attention and elicit enhanced neural processing, likely due to their evolutionary importance in facilitating bonds with caregivers. Infant facial malformations are associated with a lower degree of parental investment and have been shown to negatively impact early infant-caregiver interactions. Cleft lip or cleft palate is a common facial malformation, estimated to affect 1 in 700 live births worldwide, that is associated with altered visual and neural processing as compared to normal infant faces. Importantly, it is not yet known how craniofacial repair surgery impacts responses to these faces. The current study uses eye tracking and …

Negative Social Media And Its Influence On Athlete's Performance, Bernd R. Huber

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This study aimed to investigate the potential impact of negative social media content on athletes' cortisol levels and subsequent performance. The study focused on the change in cortisol levels and differences in free throw performance, based on previous research findings. We hypothesized that negative social media postings would increase the stress experienced by student-athletes, resulting in elevated cortisol levels and decreased performance. Additionally, participants (n = 8) completed a questionnaire to examine the interaction between preexisting fear and the biological stress response. Contrary to expectations, there was no significant change in stress response, and negative postings did not have …

A Qualitative Analysis Of Construct Measurement Techniques Used In Industrial/Organizational Research, Benjamin Michael, Andrea F. Snell, Katie Rosneck

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project aims to challenge the appropriateness of the methodological strategies and tools utilized within psychological research. We will look at the types of statistical modeling used and the context in which they are used, such as measurement modeling, confirmatory factor analysis, and bifactor analysis within survey development, as well as the use of psychological constructs such as extraversion and leadership. The objective of this research is to search for and recognize patterns from the content of some of the top journal articles in the field of industrial and organizational psychology. The information gained from analyzing the content of the …