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Abstract: Research in psychology and social neuroscience distinguishes between dispositional and situational empathy for the cognitive and affective aspects of empathy. Yet, the Pictorial Empathy Test (PET) is one of the few brief tests focusing on situational affective empathy. This paper describes the adaptation of PET in a two-stage process, consisting of instrument translation and exploratory analysis of the construct in a university student sample, followed by confirmatory factor analysis and psychometric validation in a general population sample (Study 1, N = 79 and Study 2, N = 580). Our results indicate that the Spanish PET version constitutes a single factor structure with high internal consistency as well as high construct stability across genders and across in-person and online test administration setups. We report satisfactory convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity of the Spanish PET, as reported for the original version, in addition to when explored across new dimensions, like the Interpersonal Reactivity Index or in relation to age and prosocial tendencies. Based on the above, we discuss delineation of the distinct components of emotional empathy as measured by the instrument. The work presented supports the use of the Spanish PET version as a brief screening tool for state affective (emotional) empathy.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-fifth Edition's (DSM-5) Level of Personality Functioning Scale (LPFS) was introduced as a dimensional rating of impairments in self- and interpersonal functioning, and the LPFS-Brief Form (LPFS-BF) was the first published corresponding self-report. The updated LPFS-BF 2.0 has been translated into several languages and international research supports many of the instrument's psychometric properties; however, its measurement invariance has only been evaluated across a few countries. This study expands previous studies as an introductory step in a global evaluation of the LPFS-BF 2.0s measurement invariance. Archival data (N = 5,618, 57% female) from seven countries (Canada, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Italy, United Arab Emirates, United States of America) were used for this study. Participants were recruited from both community (n = 4,677) and student (n = 941) populations. After confirming adequate model fit separately in the community and student samples, we evaluated a series of increasingly stringent model comparisons to test three aspects of measurement invariance (configural, metric, scalar) and then examined latent mean differences across countries. Full scalar invariance was supported in the community sample and partial scalar invariance was supported in the student sample. Evaluation of latent mean differences revealed multiple significant differences. Overall, the LPFS-BF 2.0 appears to assess self- and interpersonal functioning impairment similarly across the included countries. Findings are discussed through the lenses of the cultures from which participants were recruited, as well as in the context of alternative explanations. Limitations, plans for future research, and implications for both research and clinical practice are offered.

The goal of this study was to evaluate the measurement invariance of an adapted assessment of motivations for social withdrawal (Social Preference Scale-Revised; SPS-R) across cultural contexts and explore associations with loneliness. Participants were a large sample of university students (N = 4,397; M-age = 20.08 years, SD = 2.96; 66% females) from 10 countries (Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, India, Italy, South Korea, Norway, Turkey, and the United States). With this cross-cultural focus, we illustrate the multiple-group factor analysis alignment method, an approach developed to assess measurement invariance when there are several groups. Results indicated approximate measurement invariance across the 10 country groups. Additional analyses indicated that overall, shyness, avoidance, and unsociability are three related, but distinct factors, with some notable country differences evident (e.g., in China, India, and Turkey). Shyness and avoidance were related positively to loneliness in all countries, but the strength of the association between shyness and loneliness differed in Italy and India relative to the other countries. Results also indicated that unsociability was related positively to loneliness in the United States only. Theoretical and assessment implications are discussed., Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant [4352017-0849], The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article:This research was supported, in part, by a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant (4352017-0849) to authors R.J.C. and J.C.B.

Teachers play important roles in identifying and promoting gifted students. An open question is: Which student characteristics do teachers use to evaluate whether a student is gifted or not? We used data from a representative sample of Dutch primary school teachers ( N = 1,304) who were asked whether or not they thought the students ( N = 26,720) in their class were gifted. We investigated students’ cognitive and noncognitive attributes as well as demographic factors that might be relevant for this judgment. In sum, the findings revealed that teachers considered students to be gifted when, in comparison with their peers, students were superior in cognitive domains, especially with respect to academic achievement, scored higher on openness to experience and lower on agreeableness, were male, were younger, and came from families with higher parental education. These findings are discussed in relation to research on teacher nominations, teachers’ representations of giftedness and gifted students, and theoretical conceptions of giftedness.

To keep up with technological advances and macro-economic trends, higher education has increasingly focused on developing students’ employability competences through mentoring programs. However, measuring the effectiveness of such mentoring programs has remained difficult, because many mentoring measurements are not validated or grounded in theory. Furthermore, existing questionnaires have mostly focused on one or two types of support, ignoring the wide variety of support types offered by a mentor. Therefore, the current study’s aim was to develop and validate a new questionnaire measuring various types of mentoring support. Based on a systematic literature review, a 35-item questionnaire was developed and data were collected from mentoring programs at four higher education institutions. Data were analyzed through exploratory factor analysis (n = 225), confirmatory factor analysis (n = 208), and cross-validation (n = 101). The results support a 6-factor model (21 items) that is statistically valid and reliable for use in universities (of applied sciences). The model includes the following factors, referring to types of support and their features: trust and availability, emotional support, networking support, autonomy support, similarity, and empathy. This questionnaire makes an original contribution insofar as (1) it is based on a sound, theoretical framework, and (2) it was demonstrated to be valid and reliable across different sub-populations in higher education. The questionnaire provides educational practitioners with a sound and valid tool to evaluate the quality of their mentoring program. It can also be used to assess what types of support could be offered to a greater extent.

Linked to technological and societal developments, including the COVID-19 pandemic, employees are increasingly being given the opportunity to blend onsite and remote working including flexibility as to when and where they work. Despite the proliferation of such blended working, there is little empirical research on how leaders in organizations can contribute to facilitating its effectiveness. In the present study, we hypothesized that an empowering leadership style would be positively associated with employees' perceptions of the effectiveness of blended working. Additionally, grounded in Self-Determination Theory, we hypothesized that the satisfaction of employees' work-related psychological needs for autonomy and for competence would mediate this relation. Results of a field study (N = 405 employees) using a two-wave panel design supported a cross-lagged effect of empowering leadership on employees' perceptions of the effectiveness of blended working. However, no evidence was found for the hypothesized mediated relations. Our findings could be of value to organizations as they indicate a specific leadership style that is likely to facilitate the effectiveness of blended working.

Objective: While the CORE-10 inventory for Clinical Outcome Routine Evaluation has shown good psychometric properties in cross-sectional assessment, the feasibility of generic, short, and easy-to-use longitudinal assessment of a broadband construct such as the targeted "general psychological distress" remains to be psychometrically demonstrated. Therefore, we investigated longitudinal measurement invariance (LMI) of CORE-10. For comprehensiveness, we also analyzed its parent inventory, CORE-OM. Method: We investigated the LMI of pre- and post-therapy CORE-10 and -OM assessments in a naturalistic treatment register of 1715 patients' short psychotherapies, testing whether the construct of "psychological distress" remained the same across the treatments. Results: We observed good psychometric properties and no violations of LMI for CORE-10 in chi-squared equivalence tests, nor in effect-size-based evaluations. Only the highly sensitive chi-squared difference tests detected LMI violations but these had little practical influence. The CORE-OM data did not fit well with factorial models but this was cross-sectional rather than a genuinely longitudinal (LMI-related) issue. Conclusions: CORE-10 appeared a structurally valid measure of general psychological distress and suitable for longitudinal assessment, whereas the CORE-OM had a less clear factorial structure. Regarding psychometrics, these findings support the use of CORE-10 in longitudinal assessment during psychotherapy and do not support CORE-OM.

International audience; In Western countries, recent decades have witnessed a revolution toward gender equality. Inequalities have been greatly reduced in areas such as education or employment. Because inequalities lead to distress, this development has largely benefited women. One notable exception is the realm of parenting, which has remained rife with inequalities even in the most egalitarian countries. We hypothesized that experiencing inequality in parenting when one holds egalitarian values and raising a child in a country characterized by a high level of gender equality in other areas, increases mothers’ psychological distress in the specific area of parenting. Multilevel modeling analyses computed among 11,538 mothers from 40 countries confirmed this prediction: high egalitarian values at the individual level and high gender equality at the societal level are associated with higher burnout levels in mothers. The associations hold beyond differences in sociodemographic characteristics at the individual level and beyond economic disparities at the societal level. These findings show the importance of egalitarian values and gender equality and their paradoxical effect when inequalities are still present in specific areas as parenting. This study reveals the crucial need to act not only at the micro level but also at the macro level to promote gender equality in parenting and prevent parental burnout.

BACKGROUND: Research indicates that difficulties across multiple socioemotional functioning domains (e.g., social emotion expression/regulation, response to social elicitors of emotion) and negatively biased interpretations of ambiguous social situations may affect eating disorder symptoms. The impact of inflexible interpretations of social situations on eating disorder symptoms is less clear. The present study therefore examined relations between inflexible and biased social interpretations, socioemotional functioning, and eating disorder symptoms. METHOD: A total of 310 participants from the general population, recruited from an online crowdsourcing platform, completed measures of socioemotional functioning (e.g., rejection sensitivity, negative social exchange), eating disorder symptoms, and positive and negative interpretation bias and inflexibility on a single measurement occasion. RESULTS: Socioemotional functioning impairments (Pillai's trace = 0.11, p

Although there is substantial stability in personality across time, it is now well-recognized that there is also substantial mean-level change across the lifespan (Ferguson, 2010; Roberts et al., 2006). This change is thought to occur most rapidly during the first part of individuals’ lives (e.g., Klimstra et al., 2009; Borghuis et al., 2017), due to the many personal and environmental changes that young people are forced to adapt to. Following both social investment theory (Roberts et al., 2008) and McAdams’ three-layer model of personality (2013), transition moments when individuals must adjust to new social roles may be drivers of personality development. In the past, both the transition to tertiary education (Klimstra et al., 2018; Lüdtke et al., 2011) and the transition to working life (Van Dijk et al., 2020; Den Boer et al., 2019; Bleidorn et al., 2016) have been found to be associated with maturation in the Big Five personality traits . However, how young people respond to changes in their lives may depend on the extent to which they already have a clear image of who they are, and therefore it may be important to consider their mean-level development of their self-concept clarity leading up to the transition. This results in the following three research questions: 1. What does mean-level personality development look like across adolescence and young adulthood (approx. age 12-25)? 2. What is the role of the transition to tertiary education and of the transition to working life in this mean-level development? 3. Does self-concept clarity moderate the impact of these transition moments on mean-level personality development?

Personality traits have been reported to predict difficulties in performing instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) in old age, such as preparing meals or shopping. However, little is known about the reciprocal effects on personality. In this study, we examined bidirectional relationships between personality traits and the capacity to perform IADL using four waves of longitudinal data from 3540 older adults (aged 65 years and older) from the Health and Retirement Study. We applied a random-intercept cross-lagged panel model to separate between- and within-person effects across time and compared it to a traditional cross-lagged panel model. At the between-person level, higher neuroticism and lower conscientiousness were associated with more IADL limitations. Within individuals across time, increases in neuroticism and decreases in conscientiousness and extraversion were associated with increases in IADL limitations 4 years later. In contrast, increases in IADL limitations only predicted increases in neuroticism and decreases in extraversion. These results indicate that some personality traits affect and are affected by limitations in functional capacities in old age. Results of the within-person model build a strong foundation for future personality interventions as a pathway to maintain high functioning in old age.

Item does not contain fulltext Event centrality is defined as the extent to which a memory of a traumatic event forms a reference point for people’s identity and attribution of meaning to other experiences in their life. Event centrality is typically measured with the Centrality of Event Scale (CES; Berntsen & Rubin, 2006). The present study’s first aim was to investigate the underlying factor structure and construct validity of the Dutch 20-item CES (CES-20) in undergraduates (N = 1,091). The second aim was to test whether the CES-20 could prospectively predict posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms four months later. The data supported a one-factor structure of the CES with a high internal consistency (alpha = .95), which is not in line with the theoretical model of event centrality but aligns with previous empirical research. Furthermore, high construct validity was evidenced by positive and significant relations between the CES and PTSD symptoms, depressive symptoms, DSM-5 trauma A criterion, and the number of experienced negative life events. Event centrality was not a significant predictor of PTSD symptoms four months later when controlling for PTSD symptoms at time 1, which questions the prospective relation between event centrality and later PTSD symptoms for those events. 11 p.

Quality of life (QOL) has gained increased interest as a critical pathway to better understanding the lives and circumstances of children and adolescents in both the general population and among specific populations. Yet, QOL assessment among youngsters in youth care services remains a highly under-researched topic. This study examines the suitability and psychometric properties of a new QOL self-report scale for adolescents between 12 and 18 years old in youth care: the Quality of Life in Youth Services Scale (QOLYSS). The provisional version of the QOLYSS was pre-tested in a sample of 28 adolescents in youth care to examine its applicability and feasibility. Next, a comprehensive evaluation of the psychometric properties of the field-test version was conducted in a sample of 271 adolescents in youth care in Flanders, Belgium (M = 15.43, SD = 1.73). Classical item and factor analyses were carried out per subscale, (test-retest) reliability and item-discriminant validity of the subscales were examined, convergent validity was explored, and confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the goodness-of-fit of different measurement models. Reliability measures of the scale are satisfactory, results are indicative of convergent validity, and confirmatory factor analysis provides evidence for the eight correlated factors model. Future lines of research concerning the ongoing development and application of the QOLYSS are discussed.

In an increasingly digital world, those who remain offline may face greater challenges across multiple contexts of everyday life. Besides being less likely to be internet users, older age groups go online less frequently and for fewer activities. Understanding which factors facilitate or prevent internet use in later life is therefore essential to minimize existing age-based digital inequalities. Based on the 2014 and 2017 waves of the German Ageing Survey, comprising 3,479 respondents aged 40 years and older, this study examined the longitudinal relationships of a wide range of often overlooked, yet potentially relevant factors related to functional ability, social support, and self-perceptions of aging with general internet use and seven specific online behaviors. As the only factors relating to general use and a considerable number of specific uses, cognitive functioning and competence-related self-perceptions of aging emerged as the most important correlates of internet use in middle and late adulthood. Better cognitive functioning preceded contacting friends, acquaintances, and relatives, searching for information, banking, and shopping more frequently 3 years later. In turn, competence self-perceptions of aging preceded contacting others, searching for new social contacts, seeking information, banking, engaging in online entertainment, and creating contents more frequently 3 years later. Reciprocal relationships were also found between each factor and general use, suggesting mutual influences. Additionally, physical functioning and received informational support preceded greater use for specific activities. These findings elucidate which factors to consider when developing effective strategies to promote general and specific internet use among middle-aged and older adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Background: Digital transformation has influenced all areas of adolescents’ lives, including the ways adolescents maintain friendships. Interpersonal communication is one of the most common activities while online. Online communication may provide adolescents with opportunities to expand their social contacts, but these encounters can be risky, especially when the communication is with unknown people on the internet. This study examined the associations between different forms of online communication behavior and well-being. Materials and methods: Data were collected from Finnish adolescents as part of the Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) study in 2018. The participants were 3,140 Finnish adolescents aged 11–15 years. Descriptive analyses were used to examine the frequency of different forms of online communication behaviors. The associations between online communications and individual factors were analyzed using the X2 test and 95% confidence intervals. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the extent to which adolescents’ online communication behavior explained the variance in adolescents’ well-being indicators. Results: Overall, 60% of the adolescents reported communicating intensively with close friends, with higher rates of intensive communication reported by girls, higher age groups, and the high health literacy group. 22% of adolescents reported intensive communication with friends they got to know through the internet (online friends), while intensive online communication with unknown people was reported by 13% of adolescents. Overall, around one-fourth of adolescents preferred sharing personal matters online rather than in face-to-face encounters, and 10% of adolescents reported using the internet daily to get to know new people, and to look for like-minded company. The SEM analysis showed that keeping online contact with offline friends was linked to a positive outcome in all the measured well-being indicators; however, intensive communication with people contacted only online (online friends and unknown people) was negatively associated with well-being indicators (lower self-rated health, lower life satisfaction, higher loneliness, and problematic social media use). Conclusion: Both positive and negative associations were observed between online communication and well-being, depending on the target and content of the communication. The results indicate that online communication has benefits for adolescents who have more offline social life. Overall, one should ensure that the impact of interventions is proportionately greater for adolescents at the bottom end of the health gradient. peerReviewed

ispartof: COMPUTERS IN HUMAN BEHAVIOR vol:144 status: accepted

The present article reports a study conducted to develop and validate a Danish translation of the Purpose in Life test-Short Form (PIL-SF) and examine age effects on this eudemonic measure. The study examined the reliability, unidimensionality, and construct validity of the Danish PIL-SF using a large and representative sample (N = 4,849). The results indicated that the Danish PIL-SF is a reliable and valid measure of meaning and purpose in life, positively associated with but distinct from hedonic well-being. The high degree of similarity between the measurement properties of the Danish PIL-SF, as compared with the English-language PIL-SF, supports the validity of the Danish translation. Furthermore, the unidimensional structure of the Danish measure replicates the structure of the English-language PIL-SF. Given its large and representative sample, the present study provides the current best estimate of a normative population value for the PIL-SF. Also, the present study is the first to our knowledge to explore potential relationships between age and the PIL-SF, and a small positive effect of age on the Danish PIL-SF was found. Limitations and suggestions for further research are discussed.

Parents play a critical role in emotional socialization and the development of emotion regulation during childhood. The tools to measure how parents assist children's emotion regulation are very limited. The Parental Assistance with Child Emotion Regulation (PACER) Questionnaire is a novel scale developed for this purpose with excellent psychometric properties. The aim of this study is to adapt the PACER to Turkish and investigate its psychometric properties in the Turkish cultural setting. The data were collected from 700 parents who have children aged birth to 17 years. In addition to the PACER, participants filled out some scales about their own beliefs and behaviors, also their children's psychological symptoms. We confirmed the original ten-factor structures of the PACER in a Turkish sample and the measurement invariance supported the PACER's structure across subgroups. The high internal consistencies of factors were achieved; however, the test-retest reliability was lower than expected. The factors of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (e.g., rumination, expressive suppression, avoidance) were positively associated with parents' own emotion regulation deficit, symptoms, and child's symptoms, while others (e.g., reappraisal, problem-solving) were negatively associated with them. Overall, our results suggest that the Turkish version of the PACER is a psychometrically valid and reliable measurement to assess how parents support their children to regulate their emotions. We believe that this adaptation allows the scale to be used in developmental and clinical psychology studies and will pave the way for cross-cultural studies.

The quality of young children's peer relationships is important for their development, and it is assumed that parenting and self-regulation skills shape children's behavior when interacting with peers. In this multi-informant-multi-method study, we examined the direct and mediated associations between preschool parenting, children's behavioral self-regulation, and peer aggression and peer relationship problems in elementary school-aged children and extended previous work by examining both positive and negative parenting of both mothers and fathers. In a large community sample (n = 698) of parents and children who were between 1 and 6 years old, we obtained information on observed maternal sensitivity, mother- and father-reported harsh discipline, observed child self-regulation, and child-reported aggression towards peers, peer rejection and victimization. Results from a structural equation model showed that maternal sensitivity was prospectively associated with children's behavioral self-regulation and that lower levels of behavioral self-regulation were associated with higher levels of children's peer aggression and peer relationship problems. However, children's behavioral self-regulation did not mediate the association between maternal sensitivity and peer relationship problems. In addition, higher levels of paternal, but not maternal, harsh discipline were directly associated with more peer relationship problems, but again no mediation was found. The results highlight the importance of maternal sensitivity for children's behavioral self-regulation and the role of paternal harsh discipline for the quality of children's later peer relationships. Our findings suggest it is important to take maternal and paternal parenting practices into account as they might have different effects on the child.

Despite increasing focus on the importance of self–regulated learning for undergraduate students in universities in recent years, very little is known about its specific features in universities in developing countries, in general, and Ethiopia, in particular. This study examined the relationships of self-regulated learning strategies (SRLSs) with perceived learning and further assessed the relationships within the SRLS components in Ethiopian public universities. For this, the authors adopted Pintrich’s self-regulation theory as a guiding framework and used structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis. The sample used in the analysis pooled survey data from three randomly selected public universities and included volunteer undergraduate students having a major in Business and Economics and Engineering and Technology fields (n = 1142; male = 700 and female = 442), with mean age = 21.98 and SD = 2.50. The results indicated that the student SRLS and perceived learning gains scores were average values in terms of the magnitude of those measured variables. A two–step hierarchical regression analysis showed that the five components of SRLS that emerged from SEM analysis significantly predicted students’ perceived learning over and above the control variables (ΔR2 ≥ 0.38 and 39%) for the total samples. Moreover, the regression results showed that greater predictions were observed for the help–seeking component (0.35 ≤ β ≥ 0.47) than others, significantly positively predicting the perceived learning for the total samples. Overall, the findings of this study indicate that the SRLSs are relevant mechanisms to aid student success in higher education. The implications of the study are highlighted.

Home-grown protein crops as an alternative to soya in dairy cattle meals, as well as other sustainable ethical-based practices, have been proposed to increase the sustainability of dairy production. Data on consumer acceptance of the three novel sustainable production strategies of ‘agroforestry’, ‘prolonged maternal feeding’ of young cattle and ‘alternative protein source’ were collected through an online survey on consumer in six European Union countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Italy and the UK. Using Chen’s extended version of the Theory of Planned Behaviour model, the underlying model hypotheses on the attitudes and intentions of these consumers towards these production practices were tested, to establish the explanatory power of the model in the specific context of novel sustainable production strategies. Furthermore, the influence of gender and consumer ethical choices on their attitudes towards these innovative practices was also tested. These data show that ‘prolonged maternal feeding’ is the novel production practice that has the highest level of acceptance by consumers in all of these countries, with the least accepted practice as ‘alternative protein source’. Unexpectedly, increased availability of home-grown feed, which is grounded on both farmer and societal interests for higher input self-sufficiency and more sustainable production practices, was little appreciated by consumers, although their intentions appear to be dependent on their moral norms.

The purpose of this research was to explore gender differences and cultural differences in school motivation among students from eight culturally diverse groups from Western and non-Western societies. The selected groups come from Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, Australia, the Netherlands, and Qatar. More than 10,000 secondary school students reported their mastery, performance, social, and extrinsic motivation. Results showed (very) small to moderately large gender differences, which were largely in line with prior research in Western societies. Moreover, significant differences in school motivation across the eight cultural groups were found, however, only the Qatari sample strongly deviated from the other samples. In all cultural groups, females had slightly higher scores on mastery motivation and social motivation (except for Qatari students), and in several Western and non-Western samples, males had slightly higher scores on performance motivation. Gender differences in extrinsic motivation were less straightforward.

This article demonstrates how the metaheuristic item selection algorithm ant colony optimization (ACO) can be used to develop short scales for cross-cultural surveys. Traditional item selection approaches typically select items based on expert-guided assessment of item-level information in the full scale, such as factor loadings or item correlations with relevant outcomes. ACO is an optimization procedure that instead selects items based on the properties of the resulting short models, such as model fit and reliability. Using a sample of 5,567 respondents from five countries, we selected a 15-item short form of the Big Five Inventory–2 with the goal of optimizing model fit and measurement invariance in exploratory structural equation modeling, as well as reliability, construct coverage, and criterion-related validity of the scale. We compared the psychometric properties of the new short scale with the Big Five Inventory–2 extra-short form developed with a traditional approach. Whereas both short scales maintained the construct coverage and criterion-related validity of the full scale, the ACO short scale achieved better model fit and measurement invariance across countries than the Big Five Inventory–2 extra-short form. As such, ACO can be a useful tool to identify items for cross-cultural comparisons of personality.

Contains fulltext : 219485.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) This four-wave longitudinal study examined bidirectional associations among pupils' social status (preference and popularity) and teacher-child relationship characteristics (quality, support, satisfaction, and conflict) in special education. Participants included 586 pupils (86% boys) initially attending Grades 4 and 5 (Mage Wave 1 = 10.82 years, SD = 0.86) and their teachers. Reports of teacher-child relationships were collected from teachers and pupils through questionnaires. Peer nominations were used to assess preference and popularity. Autoregressive cross-lagged models indicated that preference predicted changes in satisfaction between school years. Conflict in the teacher–child relationship predicted preference, and preference and popularity predicted conflict within and between school years. Bidirectionality of the associations depended on the aspect of the teacher-child relationship and the dimension of social status. Conflict was more robustly related to social status than satisfaction, support, and pupil-reported relationship quality. The associations within school years were not more robust than associations between school years. 11 p.

The measurement of gender role attitudes has been found to be problematic in previous studies, especially in comparative perspective. The present study adopts a novel approach and investigates the position of the gender role attitudes scale in the questionnaire as a potential source of bias. In particular, the present study aims at assessing the context effect of the family norms question on the measurement of gender role attitudes by adopting the theoretical perspective of the construal model of attitudes, according to which the adjacent questions constitute the context for interpreting and answering a stimulus. The study employs data from the CROss-National Online Survey panel, which was fielded in 2017 and contained an experiment where the order of the questions under investigation varied. The reliability, validity and invariance of the measurement of gender role attitudes across experimental settings and countries (Estonia, Great Britain and Slovenia) are explored adopting several analytical techniques, such as regression models and multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis. Differences between experimental settings emerged, suggesting that the questionnaire context matters for the validity and stability of the gender role attitudes items; however, the lack of patterns hinders general conclusions on what is the order of questions yielding better measurement of the gender role attitudes scale. Clear differences among the countries indicate that the cultural context may interact with the question context. Finally, we stress that the measurement is overall poor, urging to find a better formulation of the items measuring gender role attitudes., Survey Research Methods, Vol 15 No 1 (2021)

Background Patient empowerment is associated with improvements in different patient-reported and clinical outcomes. However, despite being widely researched, high quality and theoretically substantiated disease-generic measures of patient empowerment are lacking. The few good instruments that are available have not reported important psychometric properties, including measurement invariance. The aim of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the 15-item Gothenburg Empowerment Scale (GES), with a particular focus on measurement invariance of the GES across individuals from three countries. Methods Adults with congenital heart disease from Belgium, Norway and South Korea completed the GES and other patient-reported outcomes as part of an international, cross-sectional, descriptive study called APPROACH-IS II. The scale’s content (missing data) and factorial validity (confirmatory factor analyses), measurement invariance (multi-group confirmatory factor analyses), responsiveness (floor and ceiling effects) and reliability (internal consistency) were assessed. Results Content validity, responsiveness and reliability were confirmed. Nonetheless, metric but not scalar measurement invariance was supported when including the three countries, possibly because the scale performed differently in the sample from South Korea. A second set of analyses supported partial scalar invariance for a sample that was limited to Norway and Belgium. Conclusion Our study offers preliminary evidence that GES is a valid and reliable measure of patient empowerment in adults with congenital heart disease. However, cross-country comparisons must be made with caution, given the scale did not perform equivalently across the three countries.

Applying qualitative and quantitative analyses across four studies and seven samples, we clarified the meaning and developed a new measure of career insecurity. Career insecurity is defined as ���an individual���s thoughts and worries that central content aspects of one���s future career might possibly develop in an undesired manner.��� The new Multidimensional Career Insecurity Scale (MU-CI-S) measures eight career insecurity (CI) dimensions: (1) CI-Career opportunities, (2) CI-Decreased prestige and qualification requirements of the employment, (3) CI-Contractual employment conditions, (4) CI-Unemployment, (5) CI-Change of workplace, (6) CI-Retirement, (7) CI-Work-nonwork interactions, and (8) CI-Discrepancy between individual resources and work demands. Across all studies, the MU-CI-S showed excellent psychometric properties (e.g., factor loadings of all items and internal consistencies of all dimensions) and high levels of construct validity (e.g., theoretically assumed factorial structure and discriminant and convergent validity). Moreover, the analyses showed concurrent, predictive, and incremental validity beyond neuroticism and other job and career insecurity measures for predicting health and well-being, job performance, career success, and career attitudes. The results provide a comprehensive assessment and investigation of career-related insecurity perceptions in the current labor market. Moreover, the results offer theoretical and practical implications for individual career planning, career counseling, and organizational career management.

Critical thinking is a combination of complex cognitive skills that are used for purposeful thinking. It is important for the successful acquisition of disciplinary skills in higher education and thus, it is a valuable competency for a new student. The complex nature of critical thinking leads to challenges for its assessment even in performance assessments such as CLA+ International (Collegiate Learning Assessment). The aim with this study is to examine internal associations of a critical thinking assessment for new students in higher education. The sample consisted of 1469 first-year students in 18 higher education institutions in Finland. An open-ended performance task and multiple-choice tasks were used to assess six measures of critical thinking, namely analysis and problem solving, writing effectiveness, writing mechanics, scientific and quantitative reasoning, critical reading and critiquing an argument. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to analyse the data. A latent component indicated by the measures derived from the performance task was identified. The measures derived from the multiple-choice tasks did not form a factorial structure. Multiple-choice questions are problematic in critical thinking assessment as they focus on individual skills instead of holistic use of skills. Implications for assessment development and higher education are discussed.