Background: Although DSM-IV requires symptoms in three criterion domains for a diagnosis of autistic disorder, the extent to which those domains are phenotypically independent is an unanswered and important question. The identification of "endophenotypes" of the autistic syndrome may be very useful for genetic and neurobiologic studies of autism,…

A scale was constructed to assess children's generalized trust beliefs (CGTB) in four target groups (mother, father, teacher and peer) with respect to three bases of trust: reliability, emotionality, and honesty. The CGTB Scale was administered to 145 Year 5 and 156 Year 6 children (mean age = 10 years, 1 month) residing in the English Midlands,…

Objective: The aims of this study were to examine (1) the psychometric properties of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire [CTQ; Bernstein, D., Fink, L., Handelsman, L., Foote, J., Lovejoy, M., Wenzel, K., Sapareto, E., & Ruggiero, J. (1994). Initial reliability and validity of a new retrospective measure of child abuse and neglect. American…

This study compares perspectives about benefits and risks of inclusion of 237 parents of children with and without disabilities and 118 providers in the same community-based reverse inclusion preschool program, using the same measures. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed a two factor structure, risks and benefits, based on scale scores from the…

The Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; A. T. Beck, R. A. Steer, & G. K. Brown, 1996) is a widely used measure of depressive symptomatology originally authored in English and then translated to Spanish. However, there are very limited data available on the Spanish translation. This study compared the psychometric characteristics of the…

Although the Beck Depression Inventory and Beck Anxiety Inventory are two of the most widely used instruments for assessing depressive and anxious symptoms in both clinical and nonclinical populations, their cross-cultural reliability and validity have yet to be fully established. In this study, 2,703 Caucasian American and 1,110 Latino college…

Background: Increasing emphasis on family-centred approaches to services and supports for families of children with disabilities has surfaced the issue of accountability for family outcomes. We present a review of literature about the impacts of children with disabilities on families as a backdrop to proposing family quality of life as a concept…

Although instruments that estimate the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) are available, few include potential predictors of violent behaviors such as beliefs and attitudes. The main purpose of this study was to develop a measure of attitudes toward various forms of IPV. The secondary purpose was to examine Mexican American and…

Social support from intimate and confiding relationships has received a great deal of attention; however, the study of the community as a relevant source of support has been comparatively lacking. In this article, we present a multidimensional measure of community support (Perceived Community Support Questionnaire, PCSQ). Through exploratory and…

Issues associated with drug and alcohol use as well as other delinquent behaviors among adolescents are of utmost importance to those concerned with student success in middle grades settings. In order to target preventive interventions for these problems, research suggests that educators should examine the risk and protective factors associated…

Purpose: The purpose of the population-based study in the paper is to report on progress in formulating instruments to measure children's resilience and associated protective factors in family, primary school and community contexts. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper a total of 2,794 students, 1,558 parents/caregivers, and 465 staff were…

This study examined the factor structure of the parent and teacher versions of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; R. Goodman, 1997) with a sample of first-grade children at risk for educational failure. The 5-factor model previously found in studies using exploratory factor analysis was fit to the data for both parent and teacher…

Based on studies carried out on qualitative data an instrument was constructed for investigating how larger numbers of students handle graphics. This test, consisting of 18 pages, each with its own graphic display(s) and a set of tasks, was distributed to 363 students, 15-16 years of age, from five different schools. The format of the questions…

The notion of item context effects implies that psychometric properties of an item or scale are altered by the presentation format, for example, blocked versus randomized. In an experimental study with high school students, the experimental group (n = 407) answered a four-dimensional academic self-concept questionnaire, in which the items were…

The factor structure of the Family Emotional Involvement and Criticism Scale (FEICS) is tested in a sample of Irish adolescents. Participants were 661 adolescents with a mean age of 15.9 years (SD = 1.26). Interpretation of both the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of the FEICS show support for the two-factor structure of the FEICS…