A critical review of the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale-Global and Thematic Apperception Test in clinical practice and research: Psychometric limitations and ethical implications.

The Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale-Global (SCORS-G) has been used increasingly in multimethod psychological assessment contexts as a framework for eliciting personality information from narrative data collection techniques, the most popular of which is the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). Although research on the reliability and validity of the SCORS system has evolved over the last decade, there are numerous psychometric and procedural shortcomings (and corresponding ethical issues) that should be considered when applying this methodology to the TAT in clinical and research settings. Chief among these concerns is a lack of normative benchmarking, variability in TAT card batteries that are administered across contexts (which limit generalization and direct research comparisons), ambiguous reliability and validity evidence (and lack of incremental validity), and redundancy in published studies (i.e., versions of the same data/samples presented repeatedly across research). There is also a dearth of information about how SCORS-G data are influenced by factors such as culture, language, cognitive functioning, and other variables that may impact narrative output, word count, and richness (and subsequent interpretation and clinical decision making). The review concludes with a discussion of the ethical implications of using the SCORS-G in clinical practice, and recommendation for a moratorium on its use until minimum psychometric standards can be established and greater clarity is achieved surrounding its use with diverse and vulnerable populations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Measurement invariance of the University of Rhode Island Change Assessment Scale in Project MATCH: An exploratory structural equation modeling approach.

BACKGROUND: Progression through the stages of change is a proposed mechanism underlying the effects of treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD). However, examining stages of change as a mechanism of treatment effects requires that the measure be invariant across patient subgroups, treatment conditions, and time. In this study, we examined measurement invariance of the University of Rhode Island Change Assessment Scale (URICA) in Project MATCH using an exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) approach. METHODS: We conducted a secondary analysis of data from Project MATCH (N = 1726; Mage  = 40.2, SD = 10.9; 75.7% male; 80% non-Hispanic white), a multisite randomized clinical trial that tested three AUD treatments: Motivational Enhancement Therapy, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, or Twelve-Step Facilitation. Participants completed the 24-item URICA for assessing the stages of change in relation to drinking at baseline and post-treatment (3 months after baseline). RESULTS: A 4-factor ESEM provided a good fit to the data and a better fit to the data than a conventional 4-factor confirmatory factor analysis model. Further, the URICA demonstrated scalar invariance across each patient subgroup at baseline (sex, ethnicity, marital status, education, and parental history of AUD) and treatment condition at follow-up. However, the URICA was not longitudinally invariant as the metric model resulted in a significant decrement in model fit. CONCLUSIONS: Measurement invariance of the URICA over time was not supported. Longitudinally invariant measures of the stages of change are needed to test the proposal that progression through the stages explains treatment effects.