Of the several measures of optimism presently available in the literature, the Life Orientation Test (LOT; Scheier & Carver, 1985) has been the most widely used in empirical research. This article explores, confirms, and cross-validates the factor structure of the Chinese version of the LOT with ordinal data by using robust weighted least…

An emerging body of empirical research highlights the impact of acculturative stress in the lives of culturally diverse populations. Therefore, to facilitate future research in this area, we conducted 3 studies to examine the psychometric properties of the Riverside Acculturation Stress Inventory (RASI; Benet-Martinez & Haritatos, 2005) and its 5…

Experiential avoidance (EA) has been conceptualized as the tendency to avoid negative internal experiences and is an important concept in numerous conceptualizations of psychopathology as well as theories of psychotherapy. Existing measures of EA have either been narrowly defined or demonstrated unsatisfactory internal consistency and/or evidence…

A number of recent studies have used Meehl's (1995) taxometric method to determine empirically whether one should model assessment-related constructs as categories or dimensions. The taxometric method includes multiple data-analytic procedures designed to check the consistency of results. The goal is to differentiate between strong evidence of…

The Short-Term Assessment of Risk and Treatability (START; C. D. Webster, M. L. Martin, J. Brink, T. L. Nicholls, & S. L. Desmarais, 2009; C. D. Webster, M. L. Martin, J. Brink, T. L. Nicholls, & C. Middleton, 2004) is a relatively new structured professional judgment guide for the assessment and management of short-term risks associated…

Using a school-based (N = 1,060) and clinic-referred (N = 303) youth sample, the authors developed a 25-item shortened version of the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS) using Schmid-Leiman exploratory bifactor analysis to reduce client burden and administration time and thus improve the transportability characteristics of this…

The Conformity to Feminine Norms Inventory-45 (CFNI-45; Parent & Moradi, 2010) is an important tool for assessing level of conformity to feminine gender norms and for investigating the implications of such norms for women's functioning. The authors of the present study assessed the factor structure, measurement invariance, reliability, and…

This study examined the reliability and validity of an expanded version of the Iowa Sleep Disturbances Inventory (ISDI; Koffel & Watson, 2010) in 2 samples (219 college students and 200 psychiatric patients). The expanded ISDI includes the scales Sleep Paralysis and Sleep Hallucinations. These scales, along with the Nightmares scale, help define a…

There has been an exponential increase of interest in the dark side of human nature during the last decade. To better understand this dark side, the authors developed and validated a concise, 12-item measure of the Dark Triad: narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism. In 4 studies involving 1,085 participants, they examined its structural…

Goldberg's International Personality Item Pool (IPIP; Goldberg, 1999) provides researchers with public-domain, free-access personality measurement scales that are proxies of well-established published scales. One of the more commonly used IPIP sets employs 50 items to measure the 5 broad domains of the 5-factor model, with 10 items per factor. The…

Effectively and efficiently diagnosing African Americans' mental health has been a chronically unresolved challenge. To meet this challenge we developed a tool to better understand African Americans' mental health: the Multiculturally Sensitive Mental Health Scale (MSMHS). Three studies reporting the development and initial validation of the MSMHS…

The number of life events reported by study participants is sensitive to the method of data collection and time intervals under consideration. Individual characteristics also influence reporting; respondents with poor mental health report more life events. Much current research on life events is cross-sectional. Data from a longitudinal study of…

Although several measures of obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms exist, most are limited in that they are not consistent with the most recent empirical findings on the nature and dimensional structure of obsessions and compulsions. In the present research, the authors developed and evaluated a measure called the Dimensional Obsessive-Compulsive…

The present study investigated the factor structure, reliability, convergent and discriminant validity, and U.S. norms of the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale, Second Edition (RCMAS-2; C. R. Reynolds & B. O. Richmond, 2008a) scores in a Singapore sample of 1,618 school-age children and adolescents. Although there were small…

This study analyzed the reliability and validity of an indirect measure of clarity of feelings that is based on response latencies (RTs) of mood ratings. Fifty-two participants completed a laboratory session and an experience-sampling week with 6 measurement occasions per day. Shorter RT of mood ratings measured in the laboratory (but not…