Studies of executive function (EF) in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have reported mixed findings. Possible confounds include EF domain assessed and co-occurring neurodevelopmental diagnoses. EF task performance across multiple domains and everyday function of autistic adults (n = 110) was significantly different to age- and IQ-matched controls (n…

This study explored attitudes and perceptions of Chinese high school students regarding freedom of expression in their country. A survey capturing perceptions over various forms of free speech (e.g., student publication, dress code) was administered to a sample of 838, which included students from both urban and rural areas within Shaanxi Province…

This study examined the structural validity of the Schedule of Racist Events (SRE), a brief inventory that assesses the frequency and stressfulness of racism in the lives of African Americans. The original three-factor structure of the SRE was examined, along with an alternative structure that was designed to test whether the SRE captured types of…

Studies of factorial invariance examine whether a common factor model holds across multiple populations with identical parameter values. Partial factorial invariance exists when some, but not all, parameters are invariant. The literature on factorial invariance is unclear about what should be done if partial invariance is found. One approach to…

A maximum likelihood method of estimating the parameters of the multiple factor model when data are missing from the sample is presented. A Monte Carlo study compares the method with five heuristic methods of dealing with the problem. The present method shows some advantage in accuracy of estimation. (Author/CTM)

Comrey Personality Scales (CPS) produce Factored Homogeneous Item Dimension scores for eight factors: trust/defensiveness; orderliness/lack of compulsion, social conformity/rebelliousness, activity/lack of energy, emotional stability/neuroticism, extraversion/introversion, mental toughness/sensitivity, and empathy/egocentrism. The CPS include…

Explains factor analysis, discussing its relation to other multivariate techniques and describing characteristics of the data to consider in determining the appropriateness of factor analysis. Reviews considerations in making decisions about communality estimates, factor extraction, the number of factors to rotate, methods of factor rotation,…

Order analysis, a technique to isolate unidimensional hierarchies representing multidimensional structure of binary data, is reviewed. Several theoretical flaws inherent in the probalistic version are presented. Suggestions of possible directions for future research are offered. (Author)

Delineates how changes in research methodology have impacted field of gerontology over past three decades. Illustrates impact of methodological changes on gerontology by discussing example of age-cohort-period problem as an innovation in research design. Examines case of confirmatory factor analysis as an illustration of how methodological…

Presents and illustrates structural equation modeling (multivariate analysis with latent variables, also called causal modeling or covariance structure analysis), discussing issues and problems related to the use of this methodology, possible applications of structural equation modeling to counseling psychology research, and resources for further…

Provides an example to illustrate the clustering approach. Discusses the variety of approaches in clustering; choice of cluster analytic techniques; the steps in cluster analysis; the data features such as level, shape, and scatter, that affect cluster results; alternate clustering methods and their relative effectiveness; and applications of…

A new procedure for determining the optimal number of interpretable factors to extract from a correlation matrix is introduced and compared to more conventional procedures. The new method evaluates the magnitude of the very simple structure index of goodness of fit for factor solutions of increasing rank. (Author/CTM)

Argues that co-citation methods combine citing behavior of authors by assuming they share common view of scientific literature which affects assessments of dimensionality and clustering of articles. Co-citation matrices, effects of shared point-of-view assumption, and co-citation compared with bibliographic coupling and centroid scaling are…

Reexamined previous statistical comparisons of two models for adolescent drug abuse using new statistical estimation methods in causal modeling not requiring assumptions about normally distributed variables. An asymptotically distribution free method shows that the models fit even better than assumed in the initial work. (Author/JAC)

This paper demonstrates how the problem of calibrating measures can be formulated in terms of confirmatory factor analysis. The relationships between traditional approaches and a confirmatory factor approach are specified. (Author/CTM)