Investigating the PHQ-9 With Mokken Scale Analysis and Cognitive Interviews.

Scores on the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) are frequently used to assess depression both in research and in clinical practice. The aim was to examine the validity of the PHQ-9 sum score by using Mokken scale analysis (Study I) and cognitive interviews (Study II) on the Icelandic version of PHQ-9. A primary care sample of 618 individuals was used in Study I. The results indicate that the PHQ-9 items are not close enough to perfectly unidimensional for their sum score to accurately order people on the depression severity dimension. In Study II, the sample consisted of 53 individuals, with 28 having a history of depression and 25 not. The findings reveal a number of issues concerning respondents' use of the PHQ-9. No systematic differences were found in the results of the two groups. The PHQ-9 sum score should thus be interpreted and used with great care. We provide scale revision recommendations to improve the quality of PHQ-9.

Haters Gonna Hate, Trolls Gonna Troll: The Personality Profile of a Facebook Troll.

Personality factors, such as the Dark Tetrad personality factors (Machiavellianism, narcissism and sadism) relate to greater online trolling. Other personality factors, such as the Big Five Personality factors, honesty-humility and negative social potency, may also play a role in cyberbullying, which is an aggressive behavior similar to trolling. The purpose of this study was to predict Facebook trolling behavior based on personality factors. A total of 139 participants completed a survey on their online behavior and personality factors. Online trolling behavior positively correlated with sadism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism, and negatively correlated with agreeableness, conscientiousness and honesty-humility. A hierarchical linear regression showed that sadism, Machiavellianism and negative social potency were the only unique predictors of online trolling behavior. Trolling was unrelated to the frequency of Facebook use and the frequency of commenting. Enjoyment of trolling fully mediated the relationship between Machiavellianism and the trolling behavior. The results thus suggested that Facebook trolling behaviors may be motivated by enjoying the manipulation of others.

Social Desirability in Spouse Ratings.

Whether or not socially desirable responding is a cause for concern in personality assessment has long been debated. For many researchers, McCrae and Costa laid the issue to rest when they showed that correcting for socially desirable responding in self-reports did not improve the agreement with spouse ratings on the Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Openness to Experience Personality Inventory. However, their findings rest on the assumption that observer ratings in general, and spouse ratings in particular, are an unbiased external criterion. If spouse ratings are also susceptible to socially desirable responding, correcting for the bias in self-rated measures cannot be assumed to increase agreement between self-reports and spouse ratings, and thus failure to do so should not be taken as evidence for the ineffectiveness of measuring and correcting for socially desirable responding. In the present study, McCrae and Costa's influential study was replicated with the exception of measuring socially desirable responding with the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, in both self-reports and spouse ratings. Analyses were based on responses from 70 couples who had lived together for at least one year. The results showed that both self-reports and spouse ratings are susceptible to socially desirable responding and thus McCrae and Costa's conclusion is drawn into question.

Questions on honest responding.

This article presents a new method for reducing socially desirable responding in Internet self-reports of desirable and undesirable behavior. The method is based on moving the request for honest responding, often included in the introduction to surveys, to the questioning phase of the survey. Over a quarter of Internet survey participants do not read survey instructions, and therefore, instead of asking respondents to answer honestly, they were asked whether they responded honestly. Posing the honesty message in the form of questions on honest responding draws attention to the message, increases the processing of it, and puts subsequent questions in context with the questions on honest responding. In three studies (nStudy I = 475, nStudy II = 1,015, nStudy III = 899), we tested whether presenting the questions on honest responding before questions on desirable and undesirable behavior could increase the honesty of responses, under the assumption that less attribution of desirable behavior and/or admitting to more undesirable behavior could be taken to indicate more honest responses. In all studies the participants who were presented with the questions on honest responding before questions on the target behavior produced, on average, significantly less socially desirable responses, though the effect sizes were small in all cases (Cohen's d ranging between 0.02 and 0.28 for single items, and from 0.17 to 0.34 for sum scores). The overall findings and the possible mechanisms behind the influence of the questions concerning honest responding on subsequent questions are discussed, and suggestions are made for future research.