The Change-Inventory for Career Counseling - An Instrument for Measuring Counseling-Correlated Changes.

Psychometric properties of a 23-item inventory that measures five correlates of career counseling for evaluation purposes are presented. The dimensions were developed bottom-up. The construction sample consisted of 3316 adult clients of public career counseling services in Switzerland, who were assessed within a naturalistic multicenter evaluation study with pre-post design. The inventory proved reliable (Cronbach's α between 0.72 and 0.82, McDonnald's ω between 0.73 and 0.81). Concerning validity, the dimensions were supported by exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (CFI = 0.910, SRMR = 0.044, RMSEA = 0.056). Configural, metric and scalar measurement invariance of gender (female vs. male) and age group (<30 vs. ≥30 years) was also supported. Pre-post changes are medium to large. Practical use and theoretical localization among related German-language instruments are discussed.

HoNOSCA-D As a Measure of the Severity of Diagnosed Mental Disorders in Children and Adolescents-Psychometric Properties of the German Translation.

The Health of the Nation Outcome Scales for Children and Adolescents (HoNOSCA), in use worldwide, is a 13-item measure assessing the biopsychosocial severity of mental health problems in children and adolescents. This article introduces the authorized German-language version of HoNOSCA, the HoNOSCA-D, and examines and discusses its psychometric properties based on a clinical sample of 1,533 children and adolescents aged 4;0 to 17;11 years. For the HoNOSCA-D total score (severity of mental health problems), internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) was 0.63. The discriminative power of the items ranged from 0.07 to 0.44; the average interitem correlation was 0.11. Due to this stochastic independence, calculation of a total severity index is acceptable. Using factor analysis, the principal axis factoring and varimax rotation resulted in a four-factor structure, which with a Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy of 0.684 explained 30.62% of total variance. The convergent correlations with the German-language parent report version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire were as expected and showed a medium effect size. Gender and age differences in the HoNOSCA-D total score were small. Regarding the 13 items gender and age differences were negligible to medium. The highest severity was found for schizophrenia and psychotic disorders, followed by affective disorders and social behavior disorders. Overall, validity of HoNOSCA-D was clearly supported.