Validity studies of the Strong vocational interest inventories.

The concurrent validity of the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory (SCII) and the predictive validity of the SVIB were studied in an 18-yr follow-up of a university counseling center group of male college graduates. Results were compared with a previous 12-yr follow-up of the same Ss using C. McArthur's method (1954). The SCII had concurrent validity greater than the SVIB (T399) even after correction was made for a higher percentage of high standard scores on occupational scales. Predictive validity for 18 yrs was not quite as good as for 12 yrs. Although group data were similar for the predictive validity studies, classifications of individuals between studies varied substantially. A 6-yr predictive validity study for the SVIB (T399) had validity comparable to predictive studies using an earlier edition of the SVIB. Job satisfaction and satisfaction with type of work were statistically different, but resulted in no practical difference when used as a correlate with standard occupational scale score. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predicting voice behavior in work groups.

This field study of 441 full-time employees in 95 work groups examined voice behavior (constructive challenge to the status quo with the intent of improving the situation rather than merely criticizing) as a function of person-centered (satisfaction with the work group, global self-esteem) and situational factors (group size, self-managed vs. traditional style of management). Using a measure of voice with demonstrated construct validity, the study showed that these person and situation factors explained 10% of the variance in peer-rated voice assessed 6 mo later. Significant Person?×?Situation interactions suggested that individuals with low global self-esteem or high satisfaction with their group were more responsive to the situational factors than individuals with high global self-esteem or low satisfaction. The authors discuss the importance of including person-centered characteristics, situational factors, and their interactions as predictors of voice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of social anxiousness in group brainstorming.

The authors predicted that individuals high in dispositional anxiousness would perform poorly when brainstorming in groups but not during solitary brainstorming. Exp demonstrated this result in a comparison of groups of 4 that were all high or all low in interaction anxiousness. In groups with 2 low- and 2 high-anxious individuals, the low-anxious individuals lowered their performance in the direction of the high-anxious individuals. These results suggest that part of the productivity loss observed in interactive brainstorming groups may be due to the inhibited performance of individuals who are uncomfortable with group interaction. Moreover, these individuals may influence others in the group to lower their performance in line with that inhibited performance level. Exp 2 demonstrated that poor performance of socially anxious groups in interactive brainstorming is not dependent on whether group members have individual microphones or share 1 common microphone. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Do intern applicants really need a survival guide?

Applying for internships is a time-consuming and anxiety-arousing experience for graduate clinical psychology students. Students try to choose high quality programs that will meet their needs, but they also must take into account the likelihood of being accepted. Unfortunately, students must make their decisions about which programs to apply to without adequate information. This problem is discussed, and solutions for improvement are offered. (8 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Private self-consciousness, self-awareness, and the reliability of self-reports.

Two studies found that individuals high in private self-consciousness provide self-reports of greater reliability across time than individuals low in private self-consciousness. In addition, Study 2 found that a successful manipulation of self-awareness did not affect test–retest reliability of self-reports among Ss either high or low in private self-consciousness. The hypothesis that individuals high in private self-consciousness have articulated self-schemata of greater temporal stability than individuals low in private self-consciousness received support. The discussion considers (a) how private self-consciousness, but not self-awareness, influenced test–retest reliability of self-reports, (b) how private self-consciousness and self-awareness may both influence, albeit differentially, the criterion-related validity of self-reports, and (c) the possibility that current models of self-consciousness–self-awareness require reformulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concerning the suitability of recordkeeping for validating and generalizing about reports of health-related information.

Although the primary concern of validation studies is to assess the accuracy with which individuals report about behaviors or experiences, an important secondary concern of such studies is generalizability-the extent to which findings about the response validity of studied individuals are informative about the response validity of individuals who were not studied. Two recommendations are presented for assessing generalizability when participants contribute records to which subsequent reports are referred: (a) Reports should also be collected from a group of participants who do not keep such records and (b) control variables should be included in the design to evaluate the sensitivity of the studied measures to appropriate manipulations. These recommendations are described with examples of studies that have examined validity of reports about physical activity, menstrual distress, pain-related behaviors, and dietary intake. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

External validity and scientific psychology.

Comments on the article by Stanley Sue (December 1999; see record 1999-15532-003), in which he eloquently described a persistent problem in psychological research: the relative lack of research on ethnic minorities. Sue traced the source of this problem to how science is practiced and, in particular, to scientific psychology's emphasis on internal validity over external validity. He argued that researchers' assumption that causal inferences drawn from a given study are generalizable across individuals from different ethnic backgrounds ultimately masks true differences among diverse ethnic groups and hinders research to determine whether such differences exist. Sue recommended that researchers increase their emphasis on external validity in study designs and embrace methodological pluralism in adopting more qualitative and ethnographic approaches to complement traditional scientistic methods used in psychological research. If scientific psychology is to serve the public interest, its findings must be valid and generalizable and must promote the translation of research into informed public policy. This will be possible only when psychologists stop assuming generality across population subgroups, across settings, and across times. Judicious prioritization of external validity above internal validity will build a better scientific psychology and inform public policy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Group development and the practice of group psychotherapy.

This article supports MacKenzie's (1997) proposal that group development and research be used as a guide for clinicians conducting group psychotherapy. Evidence supporting the validity of group development is presented. The author suggests that the time frame of group psychotherapy must be long enough to ensure adequate development as group productivity is associated with the later stages in the developmental sequence. Finally, clients and therapists working as partners to ensure group development is recommended. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of individual cognitive ability and idea stimulation on idea-generation performance.

A computer-based group idea-generation simulator was used to measure the performance of individuals with high and low cognitive ability who received high- or low-quality stimulation; high- and low-quality stimulation was operationalized by presenting controlled idea submissions from simulated group members throughout the idea-generation session. Cognitive ability and stimuli quality interacted such that the high cognitive ability/high-quality stimuli treatment achieved the highest performance. The results suggest that the performance of individuals with high cognitive ability can be enhanced when given high-quality stimuli or be inhibited when exposed to low-quality stimuli. The performance of individuals with low cognitive ability, in contrast, is consistently meager regardless of stimuli quality. The findings suggest that group composition cannot only significantly influence the overall ideational performance of a group, but also that of individual group members. The implications of these findings for future research, as well as the implications for the design of group idea-generation procedures, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Task design, outcome interdependence, and individual differences: Their joint effects on effort in task-performing teams (Commentary on Huguet et al., 1999).

Analyses of effort problems in groups, like that of P. Huguet, E. Charbonnier, and J.-M. Monteil (see record 1999-13879-004), have implications for how tasks are designed for work teams, how outcomes are distributed, and the complex interrelations between personality characteristics of team members and their response to the work situation. Whereas group members working on uninvolving tasks tend to loaf, when task interdependence is high and the goals are meaningful individuals in groups often expend more rather than less effort. Moreover, whereas the group's outcomes are sometimes determined by the qualities of the individuals in the groups, in other cases the experience of working collectively changes individuals (e.g., individuals who prefer to work alone change to prefer working in groups after experiencing the benefits of working collectively). In consequence, findings about individual differences are often the hardest to apply when making decisions about work group design and composition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Binge eating disorder: Reliability and validity of a new diagnostic category.

Examined the reliability and validity of binge eating disorder (BED), which has been proposed for inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV (DSM-IV). The interrater reliability of the BED diagnosis compared favorably with that of most diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-III-Revised (DSM-III-R). To assess validity, the authors compared obese individuals with and without BED and bulimia nervosa patients. BED Ss differed from the non-BED obese group on variables related to dieting and weight histories but did not differ significantly on other important variables, including measures of psychopathology. When compared with bulimia nervosa patients, Ss with BED had significantly less psychopathology and reported significantly less dietary restraint. This study lends some support to the concept of BED but suggests that additional studies of the characteristics of this disorder at different degrees of obesity would be useful. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Activity inhibition: A predictor of lateralized brain function during stress?

The authors tested the hypothesis that activity inhibition (AI), a measure of the frequency of the word “not” in written material, marks a propensity to engage functions of the right hemisphere (RH) and disengage functions of the left hemisphere (LH), particularly during stress. Study 1 and Study 2 showed that high AI predicts faster detection of stimuli presented to the RH, relative to the LH. Study 2 provided evidence that the AI-laterality effect is specific to perceptual, but not motor, laterality and that it is particularly strong in individuals with low mood, but absent in individuals in a positive mood state. Study 3 showed that negative affective stimuli prime the AI-laterality effect more strongly than positive affective stimuli. Findings from Study 4 suggest that situationally induced frustration (losing a contest), in conjunction with high AI, leads to increased attentional laterality. The present findings substantially bolster the construct validity of AI and contribute to a better understanding of earlier findings linking AI to physiological stress responses, immune system functioning, alcohol abuse, and nonverbal behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Is Attention to Feelings Beneficial or Detrimental to Affective Well-Being? Mood Regulation as a Moderator Variable.

This research examined the functionality of attention to feelings for affective well-being. The authors found that mood regulation, but not clarity of feelings, moderated the attention-well-being relationship. For individuals with high mood regulation scores, attention was beneficial to affective well-being, whereas for individuals with low mood regulation scores, attention was detrimental to affective well-being. This finding was corroborated by self- and peer reports in Study 1 and replicated in Study 2. The validity of the scales was established by the convergence of self- and peer ratings. Moreover, Study 2 showed that dysfunctional and functional and self consciousness scales suppressed variance in attention to feelings, thereby revealing that attention incorporates both adaptive and maladaptive aspects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of logical reasoning: Children's ability to verbally explain the nature of the distinction between logical and nonlogical forms of argument.

Previous research by D. Moshman and B. Franks (1986) supported the hypothesis that children do not explicitly understand the nature of the distinction between logical and nonlogical forms of argument. This research examined the performance of 8–11-year-olds (N ?=?220) on Moshman and Franks's experimental tasks when the children were cued to apply particular comprehension strategies. Findings from 2 experiments indicated that a significant number of children are capable of explicitly recognizing the necessity of logical forms and the indeterminacy of nonlogical forms and that this competence must be distinguished from their tendency to fail to attend to structural relationships between propositions and to monitor the intrusion of extraneous personal knowledge in assessing the validity of an argument. The findings suggest that all of these competencies are important components of the ability to distinguish logical and nonlogical arguments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Early syphilis in an active duty military population and the surrounding civilian community, 1985-1993

The study of human aggression has been hindered by the lack of reliable and valid diagnostic categories that specifically identify individuals with clinically significant displays of impulsive aggressive behavior. DSM intermittent explosive disorder (IED) ostensibly identifies one such group of individuals. In its current form, IED suffers from significant theoretical and psychometric shortcomings that limit its use in clinical or research settings. This study was designed to develop a revised criteria set for IED and present initial evidence supporting its reliability and validity in a well characterized group of personality disordered subjects. Accordingly, research criteria for IED-Revised (IED-R) were developed. Clinical, phenomenologic, and diagnostic data from 188 personality disordered individuals were reviewed. IED-R diagnoses were assigned using a best-estimate process. The reliability and construct validity of IED-R were examined. IED-R diagnoses had high interrater reliability (kappa = .92). Subjects meeting IED-R criteria had higher scores on dimensional measures of aggression and impulsivity, and had lower global functioning scores than non-IED-R subjects, even when related variables were controlled. IED-R criteria were more sensitive than DSM-IV IED criteria in identifying subjects with significant impulsive-aggressive behavior by a factor of four. We conclude that in personality disordered subjects, IED-R criteria can be reliably applied and appear to have sufficient validity to warrant further evaluation in field trials and in phenomenologic, epidemiologic, biologic, and treatment-outcome research.     

Evaluation of a peer rating system for predicting subsequent promotion of senior military officers.

Evaluated the validity of 1,236 peer ratings for predicting 886 US Army senior officers' promotion. A nomination technique within career field groups was used and produced split-half (group) reliabilities primarily in the high 80s and low 90s. Although there was a moderate degree of rater resistance to their operational use, the peer ratings were highly predictive of promotion to general, both for the total group and when education level was partialed out. Results extend the generality of peer rating beyond the previous restrictive training environment for junior officers into the realistic work situation and for senior level individuals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bias in testing.

Reviews the approaches that have been undertaken to detect cultural, content, predictive, and selection bias in mental tests. This includes analysis of subtle differences in the content of test items to which individuals react differently and the implications of statistical differences in predictions from test scores. It is argued that questions of bias are fundamentally questions of validity. A distinction is made between validity on one hand, and the question of whether a test should be used, even if valid, on the other. It is concluded that although on the technical side many things have been learned about the details of test bias, such research has not provided answers to social policy questions that must be decided regardless of whether tests are involved. (51 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Overview no. 61 On geometric criteria for low interfacial energy

A review of geometric criteria for low interfacial energy which have been proposed in the literature is given. These include, (i) low reciprocal volume density of coincidence sites; (ii) high planar density of coincidence sites, Γ; (iii) high Γ at constant interplanar spacing, d; (iv) large d; and (v) high density of locked-in rows of atoms. These criteria are then tested against available experimental results which include measurements of: (a) interfacial energy; (b) rotations of crystallites on flat crystal substrates; (c) boundary faceting; (d) boundary dissociation; and (e) observations of grain boundary dislocations. No support for the general usefulness of criteria (i), (ii), (iv) and (v) is found. In all cases, significant numbers of results violating these criteria are found or else it is demonstrated that their range of validity is undefined, and, hence, their predictive power is highly limited. Criterion (iii) is found to apply for a limited number of cases involving metal/metal or ionic/ionic interfaces but fails for metal/ionic interfaces. Further testing and consideration of this criterion seems called for. It is concluded that no general and useful criterion for low energy can be enshrined in a simple geometric framework. Any understanding of the variations of interfacial energy must take account of the atomic structure and the details of the bonding at the interface.