Mixed Group Validation (MGV) is an approach for estimating the diagnostic accuracy of tests. MGV is a promising alternative to the more commonly used Known Groups Validation (KGV) approach for estimating diagnostic accuracy. The advantage of MGV lies in the fact that the approach does not require a perfect external validity criterion or gold…

Screening for depression is an integral part of psychological evaluations conducted prior to bariatric surgery. The Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) is the most commonly used measure of depression in these treatment evaluations. The reliability and validity of the BDI-II has not yet been evaluated within bariatric surgery-seeking samples,…

The Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996) is intended to measure severity of depression, and because items represent a broad range of depressive symptoms, some multidimensionality exists. In recent factor-analytic studies, there has been a debate about whether the BDI-II can be considered as one scale or whether…

Although self-harming behavior is a common and costly problem for psychiatric inpatients released from the hospital, standardized tools that assess patients' risk for self-harm are rarely used in clinical settings. In this study of dually diagnosed psychiatric inpatients (N = 147), we assessed the utility of patients' self-perceptions of risk in…

The current study examined whether the Avoidance and Fusion Questionnaire for Youth (AFQ-Y; L. A. Greco, W. Lambert, & R. A. Baer, 2008), a self-report measure of psychological inflexibility for children and adolescents, might be useful for measuring psychological inflexibility for adults. The psychometric properties of the AFQ-Y were examined…

A randomized controlled trial examined whether the diagnostic process for Alzheimer's disease and other dementias may be influenced by knowledge of the patient's education and/or self-reported race. Four conditions were implemented: diagnostic team knows (a) race and education, (b) education only, (c) race only, or (d) neither. Diagnosis and…

The ability to screen quickly and thoroughly for psychological difficulties in existing and returning combat veterans who are seeking treatment for physical ailments would be of significant benefit. In the current study, item and time savings, as well as extratest correlations, associated with an audio-augmented version of the computerized…

The Barratt Impulsivity Scale (BIS), a 30-item self-report measure, is one of the most commonly used scales for the assessment of the personality construct of impulsiveness. It has recently marked 50 years of use in research and clinical settings. The current BIS-11 is held to measure 3 theoretical subtraits, namely, attentional, motor, and…

In the current study, we investigated Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) characteristics in an Old Order Amish nonclinical sample (N = 84), comparing these data with both the United States normative sample (N = 2,600) and a sample of Old Order Amish outpatients (N = 136). Consistent with our hypothesis, the Old Order Amish…

Neurocognitive impairment and negative symptoms contribute to functional disability in people with schizophrenia. Yet, a high level of unexplained variability remains after accounting for the role of these factors. This study examined the role of thought disorder, psychological complexity, and interpersonal representations, as measured by the…

The Fear of Positive Evaluation Scale (FPES; J. W. Weeks, R. G. Heimberg, & T. L. Rodebaugh, 2008) was designed to assess fear of positive evaluation, a proposed cognitive component of social anxiety. Although previous findings on the psychometric properties of the FPES have been highly encouraging, only 1 previous study has examined the…

The Positive and Negative Affect Scale for Children (PANAS-C) and the Physiological Hyperarousal Scale for Children (PH-C) seem ideal measures for school mental health screenings, because they are theory based, psychometrically sound, and brief. This study provides descriptive information and preliminary cutoff scores in an effort to increase the…

According to social rank theory, involuntary subordination may be adaptive in species that compete for resources as a mechanism to switch off fighting behaviors when loss is imminent (thus saving an organism from injury). In humans, major depression is thought to occur when involuntary subordination becomes prolonged. The present study sought to…

This study examined interrater reliability and sensitivity to change of the Achievement of Therapeutic Objectives Scale (ATOS; McCullough, Larsen, et al., 2003) in short-term dynamic psychotherapy (STDP) and cognitive therapy (CT). The ATOS is a process scale originally developed to assess patients' achievements of treatment objectives in STDP,…

The authors describe the development and psychometric properties of a new measure called the Skills of Cognitive Therapy (SoCT) in depressed adults and their cognitive therapists. The 8-item SoCT assesses patients' understanding and use of basic cognitive therapy (CT) skills rated from the perspectives of both observers (SoCT-O; therapists in this…