ABSTRACT
The Demands of Immigration Scale (DI) measures demands associated with immigration, including loss, novelty, occupational adjustment, language accommodation, discrimination, and not feeling at home in the resettlement country. The DI scale was evaluated in a sample of 1,647 immigrants from the former Soviet Union who had resided in the United States from a few months to 20 years. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the proposed factor model. The DI subscales were internally consistent and had good test-retest reliability. Support for concurrent validity was demonstrated by correlations in the expected direction between the DI total and subscale scores and measures of depression and somatization. Support for discriminant validity was demonstrated by mean group differences in some or all of the DI dimensions according to age and years in the United States.
Subject(s)
Emigration and Immigration/statistics & numerical data , Adult , Aged , Demography , Female , Humans , Ireland/ethnology , Male , Middle Aged , Nursing Methodology Research/methods , Nursing Methodology Research/statistics & numerical data , Poland/ethnology , Psychology, Social , Psychometrics , Reproducibility of Results , USSR/ethnology , United StatesABSTRACT
The Resilience Scale (RS) was developed by Wagnild and Young (1993) to measure a personality characteristic or coping resource that facilitates adaptation. The RS, however, has not been evaluated with foreign-born populations. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to report the factor structure, internal consistency, and concurrent validity of a Russian language version of the RS in a sample of 450 recent former Soviet immigrants. The 25-item 2-factor solution obtained by Wagnild and Young (1993) was not supported by the Russian data. However, a modified 12-item Russian language version of the RS was, for the most part, reliable and valid: The standardized factor loadings and goodness of fit indices obtained from confirmatory factor analysis were acceptable, the internal consistency of one of the two subscales was very good, and the correlations between scores from the RS subscales and various measures of constructs that are theoretically linked with adaptation were in the expected direction and statistically significant.
Subject(s)
Adaptation, Psychological , Emigration and Immigration , Psychological Tests , Psychometrics/methods , Cross-Cultural Comparison , Factor Analysis, Statistical , Humans , Israel , Reproducibility of Results , Russia/ethnologyABSTRACT
This paper describes efforts to develop a method of using qualitative interview data for investigating the construct validity of standardized measures. Illustration is provided through a multimethod validation study that examined the concurrence between observer assessments of interview data and a standardized paper and pencil measure-the Demands of Immigration Scale (DI). Specific aims of the multimethod validation study included (1) determining interrater reliability of the Demands of Immigration Observer Rating Scale (DI-ORS), which assessed respondents according to the interview data they provided and (2) establishing concurrence between observer assessments on the DI-ORS and the respondents' self-ratings on the DI scale. Interrater reliability of the DI-ORS was achieved with 97.9% agreement. However, there were significant differences (p < or = .05, 2-tailed) or disagreement on 5 out of 6 possible occurrences for agreement or disagreement between observer ratings on the DI-ORS and respondents' self ratings on the DI scale. The findings are informative for researchers who wish to use qualitative methods for construct validation.
