Improving Screening Cut-Off Scores for DSM-5 Adolescent Anxiety Disorder Symptom Dimensions with the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders.

Presently most adolescent anxiety disorder screening instruments make their determination of running a high risk for an anxiety disorder on the basis of a cut-off score measured by a single screening which can lead to false positives. Therefore, the goal of this study is to examine whether a repeated administration of the SCARED screening instrument for DSM-5 anxiety disorder symptoms could help in the detection of true positives while also avoiding false positives. Participants were 923 early adolescents from the general community. The adolescents' ages at the first annual screening ranged from 10 to 15 with an average of 12.5 years. In a prospective five-year longitudinal design, the adolescents completed the SCARED screening instrument for anxiety disorder symptoms on a yearly basis. To detect true positives and avoid false positives, the data were analyzed with Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) cut-off score analyses. ROC cut-off score analyses revealed that the sensitivity and specificity of high risk were greatly improved for repeated screenings above those of a single screening. The findings of this study demonstrate that a screening instrument (such as the SCARED) should be administered not just once but several times in order to better determine true positives and avoid false positives.

Personality and externalizing behavior in the transition to young adulthood: the additive value of personality facets.

PURPOSE: The directionality of effects in the associations between personality and externalizing behavior (i.e., delinquency, soft drugs use, and alcohol abuse) is unclear. Moreover, previous studies only examined personality trait domains when examining these associations, whereas personality facets underlying these broad domains provide more specificity. To address these limitations, the present study examined the directionality of effects between externalizing behavior and personality while employing a facet-level approach to personality. METHODS: Cross-lagged panel models were employed to four annual measurement waves of longitudinal data on 485 Belgian-Caucasian late adolescents (87.4 % female; M age = 18.63 years, SD = 0.61). Participants filled out the NEO-FFI as a measure of personality, the Deviant Behavior Scale as a measure of delinquency, and single items for soft drugs use and alcohol abuse on all four measurement occasions. RESULTS: The incremental value of personality facets over broad trait domains was demonstrated, as it was often the case that only some, but not all, facets underlying a specific trait domain were significantly associated with specific externalizing behaviors. Furthermore, linkages between personality and externalizing behavior were shown to be complex. Depending on the personality trait domain or facet and the specific behavior under investigation, the directionality of effects may differ. CONCLUSIONS: To capture the full complexity of the linkages between personality and externalizing behavior, a facet approach to personality is recommended. This information is potentially important for clinicians, as it indicates which specific aspects of a broad trait domain affect, and are affected by, specific externalizing behaviors.

La medición de la Inteligencia Emocional en adolescentes españoles con trastorno de ansiedad / The Measurement of Perceived Emotional Intelligence for Spanish Adolescents with Social Anxiety Disorder Symptoms

La Inteligencia Emocional (IE) es un concepto que ha sido discutido durante décadas en Psicología pero no ha recibido apoyo empírico hasta hace pocos años, a pesar de ello parece que en las últimas décadas es-te concepto está suscitando mucho interés entre las diversas áreas de la Psicología. Con este creciente interés, el concepto de percepción de la Inteligencia Emocional está recibiendo mayor atención. Debido a interés mostrado en este concepto, este artículo tiene como objetivo explorar dos aspectos importantes del mismo: la medida de la percepción de la IE y las implicaciones que la percepción de la IE puede tener en adolescentes con un trastorno de Ansiedad Social (TAS). Este estudio explora un cuestionario muy utilizado para evaluar el PEI, llamado Trait Meta-Mood Scale (TMMS). La versión española reducida de dicho cuestionario (TMMS-24) y una serie de cuestionarios muy utilizados para evaluar el TAS fueron administrados a 425 adolescentes españoles. Los resultados del estudio corroboraron que el TMMS-24 posee buenas propiedades psicométricas en adolescentes y que el componente de regulación emocional parece que está involucrado en la ansiedad social (AU)

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a concept that has been discussed for decades in Psychology but has received very little empirical study until recently. And with this growing interest, its accompanying concept, Perceived Emotional Intelligence (PEI), has also received more attention. It is due to this growing interest in PEI that this paper explores two important aspects of the PEI: the measurement of PEI and the implications PEI may have for adolescent anxiety disorder symptomology. This study explores a well-known questionnaire of PEI, namely the Trait Meta-Mood Scale questionnaire (TMMS). The Spanish shortened version of the Trait Meta-Mood Scale questionnaire (TMMS-24) and a series of well-known questionnaires of Social Anxiety Disorder symptomology were administrated to 425 Spanish high-school adolescents. The results of this study corroborated that the TMMS-24 has good psychometric properties in adolescents, and that one of its three scales (Emotional Repair) appears to be involved in adolescent SAD symptomology (AU)

Psychometric properties of the screen for child anxiety related emotional disorders for socially anxious and healthy Spanish adolescents

Socially anxious and healthy Spanish adolescents were studied in order to test the psychometric properties of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED). Confirmatory factor analyses were employed to test measurement invariance between these two populations, Cronbach’s alphas were calculated to determine the reliabilities of the scales, and partial eta-square tests calculated the effect size of the differences between socially anxious and healthy adolescents and between the adolescent boys and girls. The psychometric properties of the SCARED were good, as demonstrated by having acceptable reliabilities (ranging from .75 - .41) and a moderate multivariate effect size (çp2 = .08) between the adolescent boys and girls. Most importantly, it was demonstrated that the SCARED could differentiate between socially anxious and healthy Spanish adolescents as demonstrated by measurement invariance (÷2 = 254.27, df = 1343, GFI = .884, AGFI = .872, RMR = .031) and the large effect size (çp2 = .22) between the samples (AU)

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