This study represents an effort to better understand the latent structure of anxiety sensitivity (AS), as indexed by the 16-item Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI; S. Reiss, R. A. Peterson, M. Gursky, & R. J. McNally, 1986), by using taxometric and factor-analytic approaches in an integrative manner. Taxometric analyses indicated that AS has a…

Purpose: Many researchers have studied the acoustics, physiology, and perceptual characteristics of the voice source, but despite significant attention, it remains unclear which aspects of the source should be quantified and how measurements should be made. In this study, the authors examined the relationships among a number of existing measures…

Developers of museum service systems want to know what users think about their systems and they often design questionnaires to capture users' opinions. However, there are usually serious gaps between what developers want to know and what the users really think about the system. The present research aims to develop a questionnaire that takes into…

This study explored dimensions of adult reading motivation and collected reliability and validity information for a measure that assesses individual differences in adult reading motivation. Reading engagement theory provided the basis for an initial pool of items. A factor analysis showed that four dimensions, (a) reading as part of the self, (b)…

The aim of this article is to describe the development and validation of the Parental Monitoring Instrument (PMI). The PMI was administered to a sample of 518 parent-adolescent (aged 12 to 17 years) dyads. Initial findings provide evidence of instrument reliability and validity. The exploratory factor analysis results suggested a seven-factor…

This article presents a theoretical rationale and empirical evidence regarding the validity of scores obtained from two competing approaches to operationalizing scale items to measure emergent organizational properties. The authors consider whether items in scales intended to measure organizational properties should prompt survey takers to provide…

The authors describe the development of the Privilege and Oppression Inventory, a measure that assesses counselors' awareness of privilege and oppression along dimensions of race, sexual orientation, religion, and gender. Initial item development as well as psychometric information derived from factor analyses, reliability estimation, and…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a brief version of the Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire-Adolescent (AEQ-A; Brown, Christiansen, & Goldman, 1987). The original AEQ-A was reduced to seven items (called the AEQ-AB). Principal Components Analysis (PCA) was performed and two factors emerged (General Positive Effects and Potential Negative…

The current research extended the three-factor (mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance) measure of achievement goals in a work domain to the four-factor conceptualization (in a 2 x 2 framework) by adding items to represent mastery-avoidance goals. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on two independent samples to evaluate…

Objectives: To describe the development of an original scale that measures perceived school climate for active travel in fourth- and fifth-grade girls and boys. Methods: The data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to provide evidence of factorial validity, factorial invariance, and construct validity. Results: The CFA supported…

Spearman's "law of diminishing returns" or SLODR refers to a decrease in "g" saturation as ability level increases. SLODR has been demonstrated in a number of intellectual batteries but several important aspects of the phenomenon are not yet well understood. We investigated the presence of SLODR in the Kaufman Assessment…

I describe an assignment for personality psychology or introduction to psychology classes in which students used the Five Factor Model of personality to analyze the personality of entertainer Johnny Carson through his The New York Times obituary. Students evaluated this assignment highly: A majority indicated that the assignment was interesting,…

Some authors have suggested that sample size in covariance structure modeling should be considered in the context of how many parameters are to be estimated (e.g., Kline, 2005). Previous research has examined the effect of varying sample size relative to the number of parameters being estimated (N:q). Although some support has been found for this…

All parametric analysis focuses on the "synthetic" variables created by applying weights to "observed" variables, but these synthetic variables are called by different names across methods. This paper explains four ways of computing the synthetic scores in factor analysis: (1) regression scores; (2) M. S. Bartlett's algorithm…

Higher order factor analysis is an extension of factor analysis that is little used, but which offers the potential to model the hierarchical order often seen in natural (including psychological) phenomena more accurately. The process of higher order factor analysis is reviewed briefly, and various interpretive aids, including the Schmid-Leiman…