Purpose: Assessing early language skills through parental report is a cost-effective way to screen for language delays when resources are scarce. A pan-Arabic lexeme approach was tested by extending the Egyptian adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) to Jordan and Palestine in infants aged 8-30 months (Arabic…

The Suicide Screening Tool for Chronic Illness assesses suicide risk for persons with chronic, "invisible" illnesses. From an initial pool of 31 items, internal consistency, Rasch, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses produced a 14-item scale that is unidimensional, internally consistent, and correlated with measures of…

The present study reports on the preliminary development and validation of the Youth Internalizing Behavior Screener (YIBS) aimed at assessing internalizing behavior problems in Turkish adolescents. Participants of the study included two independent samples, comprising of 420 adolescents from two public high schools in an urban city of Turkey.…

This study aimed to compile a screening scale for high-functioning pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), using the Tokyo Child Development Schedule (TCDS) and Tokyo Autistic Behavior Scale (TABS). The 72 participants (IQ greater than or equal to 70) were divided into 3 groups after IQ matching depending on their diagnoses: i.e., PDD,…

Several research groups have previously constructed short forms of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) for different languages. We consider the specific aim of constructing such a short form to be used for language screening in a specific age group. We present a novel strategy for the construction, which is applicable…

Using 65 items from a mental health screening questionnaire, the History Opinion Inventory-Revised (HOI-R), the present study compared three strategies of scale construction--(1) internal (based on factor analysis), (2) external (based on empirical performance) and (3) intuitive (based on clinicians' opinion)--to predict whether 203,595 U.S. Air…

Although it is lengthy, the Family Background Questionnaire (FBQ) provides reliable behaviorally specific family history information. Results from reliability and validity analyses suggest that a brief version of this instrument that assesses parental responsiveness, child maltreatment, and parental substance abuse would provide a useful screening…

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive episode (MDE) are frequent and disabling consequences of surviving severe injury. The majority of those who develop these problems are not identified or treated. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a screening instrument that identifies, during hospitalization, adults at high…

We developed equivalent, alternate forms of easyCBM[R] in reading (n=20 forms) and mathematics (n=13 forms) with different skills reflective of the National Reading Panel (NRP) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), respectively. We then took three forms to use as screening measures in the fall, winter, and spring so educators…

This paper reports on the development of a battery of phonological processing tasks to screen adults with dyslexia. Tasks examined reversed spoonerism, phonological choice, working memory, and vocabulary with confusable alternatives. All tasks showed high discrimination between adults with dyslexia and a control group. Tasks also correlated with…

Developed a measure of severity of mental retardation in adults, the Level of Activity in Profound/severe Mental Retardation, scale using Rasch analysis as a guide to item selection. Results from using the scale to rate 146 adults with mental retardation support the use of the scale for classification of severe and profound retardation. (SLD)

Considerable empirical support exists for the positive affect and negative affect components of the tripartite model of anxiety and depression proposed by L. A. Clark and D. Watson (1991); however, less attention has been paid to the physiological hyperarousal component of the model. The development of the Physiological Hyperarousal Scale for…

Factor structure and predictive validity of a measure of vanity-motivated overspending were investigated based on a sample of 2,030 individuals. Confirmatory factor analysis supports the relationship between vanity and poor spending habits, but further refinement of the scale is warranted. (SLD)

Purpose: To scale language milestones in a group of 527 children to provide an instrument for screening language development. Procedure: The questionnaire regarding these milestones was completed by parental report. It was evaluated whether the scaled milestones satisfied the assumptions of the Mokken item response model. Results: The scalability…