The Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) has been reported to provide reliable scores for the four-branch ability model of emotional intelligence [Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. R. (2002). "Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). User's manual." Toronto, Canada: Multi-Health…

Adults with autism and intellectual disability (ID) are assumed to have high vulnerability for developing psychiatric disorders, but instruments or criteria for identifying those who may be in need of psychiatric services have been lacking. This study presents a new carer-completed screening checklist designed for this purpose. Differentiation…

The present study investigates the degree to which social, experiential and usage-related factors correlate with Spanish linguistic competence among adult Hispanic Heritage Language (HL) speakers in the United States. Two online survey instruments were developed in furtherance of this research aim: a Likert-scale survey measuring five areas of…

This paper discusses issues related to the design and psychometric work for mixed-format tests --tests containing both multiple-choice (MC) and constructed-response (CR) items. The issues of validity, fairness, reliability and score consistency can be addressed but for mixed-format tests there are many decisions to be made and no examination or…

The Behavioural Status Index (BEST-Index) has been introduced into Dutch forensic psychiatry to measure change in risk level of future violence. The BEST-Index is a structured observational measure that assesses aggressive behavior, degree of insight, social skills, self-care, and work and leisure skills during inpatient treatment. Thus far,…

Objective: Maternal support is an important factor in predicting outcomes following disclosure of child sexual abuse; however, definition of the construct has been unclear and existing measures of maternal support are utilized inconsistently and have limited psychometric data. The purpose of this study was to develop a reliable and valid…

Background: Working memory, the ability to store and process information, is strongly related to learning outcomes. Aims: The aim of the present study is to extend previous research on early learning and investigate the relationship between working memory, cognitive styles, and attainment in adolescents using both national curriculum tests and…

Background: Motivational interference is defined as the amount of impairment in a target activity due to the incentives of a non-chosen attractive alternative. The amount to which pupils experience motivational interference while studying or while performing a leisure activity in a school-leisure conflict situation is seen as depending on the…

Background: In addition to their more clinically evident abnormalities of social cognition, people with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) manifest perturbations of attention and sensory perception which may offer insights into the underlying neural abnormalities. Similar autistic traits in ASC relatives without a diagnosis suggest a continuity…

Recently, Gotham et al. ("2007") proposed revised algorithms for the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) with improved diagnostic validity. The aim of the current study was to replicate predictive validity, factor structure, and correlations with age and verbal and nonverbal IQ of the ADOS revised algorithms for Modules 1 and 2…

The purpose of this study was to test the validity and factorial structure of a modified version of the Preschool Anxiety Scale (Spence, Rapee, McDonald, & Ingram, 2001). The measure was completed by 764 mothers and 418 fathers of children aged 3 to 5 years. After removing, two items tapping obsessive compulsive symptoms, confirmatory factor…

Despite the growing body of research on writing assessment, little attention has been devoted to developing and validating measures for beginning writers. This study examined the technical adequacy of a Sentence Writing measure with 233 students in kindergarten and first grade. The reliability, validity, and sensitivity to growth were investigated…

The aim of this study is to assess the effective measurement range of Ryff's Psychological Well-being scales (PWB). It applies normal ogive item response theory (IRT) methodology using factor analysis procedures for ordinal data based on a limited information estimation approach. The data come from a sample of 1,179 women participating in a…

The Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS; Goodman, Price, Rasmussen, Mazure, Delgado, et al., 1989) is acknowledged as the gold standard measure of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptom severity. A number of areas where the Y-BOCS may benefit from revision have emerged in past psychometric studies of the Severity Scale and Symptom…

A Chinese translation of the Inventory of Learning Styles (ILS), a quantitative instrument employed mainly in Western higher education contexts for collecting students' feedback on their learning patterns (in the form of students' processing strategies, regulation strategies, learning orientations and conceptions of learning), was adapted and…