A Motivational-Developmental Free Response Assessment Through a Bifactor Lens.

The Motivational-Developmental Assessment (MDA) measures a university student's motivational and developmental attributes by utilizing overlapping constructs measured across four writing prompts. The MDA's format may lead to the violation of the local item independence (LII) assumption for unidimensional item response theory (IRT) scoring models, or the uncorrelated errors assumption for scoring models in classical test theory (CTT) due to the measurement of overlapping constructs within a prompt. This assumption violation is known as a testlet effect, which can be viewed as a method effect. The application of a unidimensional IRT or CTT model to score the MDA can result in imprecise parameter estimates when this effect is ignored. To control for this effect in the MDA responses, we first examined the presence of local dependence via a restricted bifactor model and Yen's Q3 statistic. Second, we applied bifactor models to account for the testlet effect in the responses, as this effect is modeled as an additional latent variable in a factor model. Results support the presence of local dependence in two of the four MDA prompts, and the use of the restricted bifactor model to account for the testlet effect in the responses. Modeling the testlet effect through the restricted bifactor model supports a scoring inference in a validation argument framework. Implications are discussed.

Evaluating the eight-item Patient Health Questionnaire's psychometric properties with Mexican and Central American descent university students.

Depression can be a serious aliment influencing the lives of millions of persons. Person's health conditions worsen and daily functioning declines in the presence of depression. However, little attention has been given to how depression is accurately assessed in diverse populations from other countries residing in the United States. Thus, this study examined the factor structure, factorial invariance, concurrent validity, and convergent validity of the widely used 8-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-8) among emerging adults of Mexican and Central American (e.g., Salvadorians, Guatemalans) men and women residing in the United States. Undergraduate student participants (n = 2,782) completed an online or paper-and-pencil version of the assessment. Support was found for two-factor and one-factor solutions; however, the unidimensional structure was recommended due to the very high correlation between the two factors (r ≥ .87). The unidimensional scale was invariant between (a) Mexican and Central American descent and (b) men and women. Depressive symptoms (as measured in the PHQ-8) were significantly correlated with another valid and reliable measured of depression, and scores on the PHQ-8 were significantly correlated with theoretically related variables (i.e., quality of life, parental support, and perceived stress). (PsycINFO Database Record

Cognitive Functioning, Health Screening Behaviors and Desire to Improve One's Health in Diabetic versus Healthy Older Women.

AIMS: To attempt to fill a gap in the literature on diabetic versus healthy older women on desire to improve one's health, health screening behaviors, and cognitive health. STUDY DESIGN: Between-subjects design. PLACE AND DURATION OF STUDY: Department of Psychology, California State University Northridge, between July 2013 and June 2015. METHODOLOGY: In this preliminary study, we compared 30 diabetic older women to 42 healthy older women (i.e., respondents who reported having no physical illnesses and not taking any medications) on: desire to improve their health (hypothesized as being higher in the diabetes group), receiving mammograms and regular health screenings (analyzed without any hypotheses, due to the lack of evidence on this topic), as well as cognitive functioning (hypothesized as lower in the diabetes group, based on prior research findings). Participants (N=72, mean age=69.29, SD=6.579, age range=50-90) were multiethnic, non-institutionalized women over the age of 50 residing in Los Angeles County who completed our research packet. The latter contained the first author's demographics list and her original structured interview protocol on older women's health, as well as the well-known Mini-Cog. RESULTS: The results of an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) showed that, as hypothesized, diabetic women desired to improve their health more than the women in the control group [F (1,70)=11.87, p<.05, η2 =.15]. Additionally, upon implementing Chi-square analyses, we discovered that diabetic respondents were significantly more likely to receive mammograms [X2 (1)=5.87, p<.05] and general health screenings [X2 (1)=4.51, p<.05] than healthy women. Moreover, in contrast with prior literature's findings, cognitive health in the diabetic group obtained marginal significance in an ANOVA as being better than the cognitive health of the control group [F(1,68)=3.30, p=.06, η2 =.05]. CONCLUSION: We have established a significant relationship between diabetes and a) desire to improve one's health and b) health screening behaviors, as well as c) cognitive impairment (at a marginally significant level) among diabetic versus healthy women. This has important clinical and public health implications. Although the findings of prior research suggest that diabetic older women often experience impaired cognitive performance compared to healthy older women, our marginally significant results showed that the opposite is true, at least in our ethnically diverse sample of modest size. Moreover, we found that diabetic older women desired to improve their health significantly more than healthy women and pursued cancer screenings and general health screenings more than their healthy counterpart. The limited size of our sample does not allow for generalizations of our findings. Additional research with larger samples is definitely needed to investigate these topics further.

Family Qualities, Self-Deprecation, and Depressive Symptoms of Zoroastrian Young Adults in Immigrant Families.

The aim of this study was to examine family qualities and self-deprecation in relation to depressive symptoms of young adult Zoroastrians from immigrant families in North America. Using snowball sampling and online surveys, self-report data were collected from 171 Zoroastrian young adults (i.e., 18-30 years old) about their perception of cohesion in their families, conflict with their parents, and the extent that they met parental general expectations (e.g., not embarrassing the family). The findings from a path analysis showed that parent-child conflict and meeting parental expectations were indirectly related to depressive symptoms through self-deprecation. Also, higher family cohesion predicted lower levels of depressive symptoms among Zoroastrian young adults. These results are similar to findings in studies with non Zoroastrians. The results suggested prevention and interventions to decrease depressive symptoms could target self-deprecating thoughts as well as perceived family dynamics.