The hierarchic structure of fears: A cross-cultural replication with the fear survey schedule in a portuguese sample

A confirmatory attempt is made to assess the validity of a hierarchic structural model of fears. Using a sample comprising 1,980 adult volunteers in Portugal, the present study set out to delineate the multidimensional structure and hierarchic organization of a large set of feared stimuli by contrasting a higher-order model comprising general fear at the highest level against a first-order model and a unitary fear model. Following a refinement of the original model, support was found for a five-factor model on a first-order level, namely (1) Social fears, (2) Agoraphobic fears, (3) Fears of bodily injury, death and illness, (4) Fears of display to aggressive scenes, and (5) Harmless animals fears. These factors in turn loaded on a General fear factor at the second-order level. However, the firstorder model was as parsimonious as a hierarchic higher-order model. The hierarchic model supports a quantitative hierarchic approach which decomposes fear disorders into agoraphobic, social, and specific (animal and bloodinjury) fears

Measurement Invariance and Construct Validity of the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) in Community Volunteers in Vietnam

Worldwide, the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) has become the most widely used measure of life satisfaction. Recently, an authorized Vietnamese-language version has been introduced. Using a convenience sample comprising community volunteers from Ho Chi Minh City (N = 1073), confirmatory support was found for the cross-national constancy of the one-dimensional structure underlying the SWLS. Corrected item-total polyserial correlations and Omega coefficient were satisfactory. Using multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, configural, metric, and scalar invariance of the SWLS factorial structure were tested by gender, age, marital status, income, and educational level. Strong evidence of scalar invariance was found for gender and education, on which relevant subgroups did not differ in terms of latent means. Partial scalar invariance was found for marital status (item 4 and 5) and income (item 4). Being involved in an intimate relationship or having a higher income were associated with higher latent means. Scalar invariance in relation to age was very poor. Accordingly, caution must be exerted when comparing age groups. A high SWLS score was predictive of good self-rated health. Implications of the findings are briefly discussed

Maternal health-related quality of life after induction of labor or expectant monitoring in pregnancy complicated by intrauterine growth retardation beyond 36 weeks

Objective: Pregnancies complicated by intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR) beyond 36 weeks of gestation are at increased risk of neonatal morbidity and mortality. Optimal treatment in IUGR at term is highly debated. Results from the multicenter DIGITAT (Disproportionate Intrauterine Growth Intervention Trial At Term) trial show that induction of labor and expectant monitoring result in equal neonatal and maternal outcomes for comparable cesarean section rates. We report the maternal health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) that was measured alongside the trial at several points in time. Methods: Both randomized and non-randomized women were asked to participate in the HR-QoL study. Women were asked to fill out written validated questionnaires, covering background characteristics, condition-specific issues and the Short Form (SF-36), European Quality of Life (EuroQoL 6D3L), Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HADS), and Symptom Check List (SCL-90) at baseline, 6 weeks postpartum and 6 months postpartum. We compared the difference scores of all summary measures between the two management strategies by ANOVA. A repeated measures multivariate mixed model wa

The CHIP-Family study to improve the psychosocial wellbeing of young children with congenital heart disease and their families: design of a randomized controlled trial

Background: Children with congenital heart disease (CHD) are at increased risk for behavioral, emotional, and cognitive problems. They often have reduced exercise capacity and participate less in sports, which is associated with a lower quality of life. Starting school may present more challenges for children with CHD and their families than for families with healthy children. Moreover, parents of children with CHD are at risk for psychosocial problems. Therefore, a family-centered psychosocial intervention for children with CHD when starting school is needed. Until now, the 'Congenital Heart Disease Intervention Program (CHIP) - School' is the only evidence-based intervention in this field. However, CHIP-School targeted parents only and resulted in non-significant, though positive, effects as to child psychosocial wellbeing. Hence, we expanded CHIP by adding a specific child module and including siblings, creating the CHIP-Family intervention. The CHIP-Family study aims to (1) test the effects of CHIP-Family on parental mental health and psychosocial wellbeing of CHD-children and to (2) identify baseline psychosocial and medical predictors for the e

The Maudsley Marital Questionnaire (MMQ): An extension of its construct validity

In a successful attempt at extending the construct validity of the Dutch version of the Maudsley Marital Questionnaire (MMQ), its sub-scales were correlated with the Marital Deprivation Scale, the Sexuality Experiencing Scale, the Marital Communication Inventory, and the Hopkins Symptom Checklist

Further evidence for cross-sample invariance of phobic factors:Psychiatric inpatient ratings on the fear survey schedule—III

Using two distinct methods of confirmatory analysis (factor invariance), phobic dimensions as measured by the Wolpe and Lang (1964) Fear Survey Schedule—III (“Social Fears”, “Agoraphobic Fears”, “Fears of Bodily Injury, Death and Illness”, “Fears of Sexual and Aggressive Scenes” and “Harmless Animals Fears”), identified in a previous study (Arrindell, 1980), were found to generalize from a non-institutionalized phobic (predominantly agoraphobic) sample to a heterogeneous psychiatric inpatient sample, irrespective of the method of analysis. Psychometric properties of the corresponding scales (inter-subscale correlations and reliability data) were encouraging and very similar to those obtained previously (Arrindell, 1980; Arrindell, Emmelkamp and van der Ende, 1984). The use of confirmatory techniques in determining the factorial validity of fear measures or their stability or generalizability across important S parameters is emphasized. It is argued that there is invariance of an Agoraphobic factor across multisamples and its importance is briefly pinpointe

Perceived parental rearing style, parental divorce and transsexualism: A controlled study

The parental representations of male-to-female and female-to-male transsexuals were rated using the EMBU inventory. Scores on the measure were compared against ratings returned by controls of similar biological sex, matched on age, educational level and number of female siblings in an ANCOVA design. In line with previous findings by Parker & Barr (1982), who studied male-to-female transsexuals only, these patients were found not to differ from the male controls in their' scoring of their mothers, but did score their fathers as less emotionally warm, more rejecting and more protective. Extending the findings by Parker & Barr (1982), female-to-male transsexuals rated both parents as more rejecting and less emotionally warm, but only their mothers as more protective than their female control equivalents rated theirs. Parental divorce distinguished both patient groups from controls, although further analyses revealed this not to imply more parental absence in patients than in controls. Male and female transsexuals differed from each other in some respects (e.g. lower scores on parental emotional warmth and higher scores on maternal rejection for the female patients), while being comparable in other respects (e.g. parental divorce)

An empirical test of the utility of the observations-to-variables ratio in factor and components analysis

Many researchers have proposed a minimum ratio of observations to variables or an absolute minimum of observations in order to obtain stable factor configurations. However, hardly any empirical studies employing real data are available that attest to the tenability of these proposals. A systematic analysis of the problem was undertaken, using self-report data from two large phobic samples on the Fear Survey Schedule- III (N = 1104) and the Fear Questionnaire (N = 960). The data sets were randomly split into subsamples with ratios varying from 1.3:1 to 19.8:1. Neither the observations to variables ratio nor an absolute minimum of observations had any influence on factor stability