An exploratory structural equation modeling bi-factor analytic approach to uncovering what burnout, depression, and anxiety scales measure

In this study, we addressed the ongoing debate about what burnout and depression scales measure by conducting an exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) bifactor analysis. A sample of 734 U.S. teachers completed a survey that included the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale (CES-D-10), the depression module of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale (GAD-7), and the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), which contains emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalization (DP), and (diminished) personal accomplishment (PA) subscales. Job adversity and workplace support were additionally measured for the purpose of a nomological network analysis. EE, burnout’s core, was more highly correlated with the depression and anxiety scales than it was with DP and PA, even with controls for item content overlap. The CES-D-10, PHQ-9, GAD-7, and EE subscale of the MBI were similarly related to job adversity and workplace support. ESEM bifactor analysis revealed that the CES-D-10, PHQ-9, GAD-7, and EE items loaded highly on a general factor, which we labeled nonspecific psychological distress (NSPD). We conclude that depression, anxiety, and EE scales reflect NSPD. DP items largely reflect two factors, NSPD and depersonalization, about equally. PA items were found to be less related to NSPD. With respect to the debate surrounding burnout-depression overlap, our findings do not support the view that the burnout construct represents a syndrome that consists of EE, DP, and diminished PA and excludes (or does not primarily include) depressive symptoms

Inquiry Into the correlation between burnout and depression

The extent to which burnout refers to anything other than a depressive condition remains an object of controversy among occupational health specialists. In three studies conducted in two different countries and two different languages, we investigated the discriminant validity of burnout scales by evaluating the magnitude of the correlation between (latent) burnout and (latent) depression. In Study 1 (N = 911), burnout was assessed with the Maslach Burnout Inventory–General Survey’s Exhaustion subscale and depression with the depression module of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ). In Study 2 (N = 1,386), the Shirom–Melamed Burnout Measure was used to assess burnout and the PHQ, depression. In Study 3 (N = 734), burnout was assessed with the Maslach Burnout Inventory–Educators Survey and depression, with the PHQ and the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale; additionally, anxiety was measured with the Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale. In each study, we examined the burnout– depression association based on confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), controlling for item-level content overlap. In the three studies, latent exhaustion, the core of burnout, and latent depression were highly correlated (correlations ranging from .83 to .88). In Studies 2 and 3, second-order CFAs indicated that depressive (and anxiety) symptoms and the exhaustion and depersonalization components of burnout are reflective of the same second-order distress/dysphoria factor. Our findings, with their replication across samples, languages, and measures, together with meta-analytic findings, cast serious doubt on the discriminant validity of the burnout construct. The implications of burnout’s problematic discriminant validity are discussed

Trazendo de volta a mensuração: fundamentos metodológicos do índice de democracia eleitoral

Resumo A medição dos principais conceitos utilizados no estudo da política tem um grande impacto no nosso conhecimento sobre ela. Afeta a nossa forma de descrever o mundo (e, portanto, as questões que parecem importantes para o estudo) e as proposições causais que consideramos válidas. Ainda mais importante, afeta o tipo de conselho que cientistas políticos podem oferecer sobre os principais temas de política pública e as questões políticas do dia. No entanto, é notável a pouca atenção é dada para a geração de dados e a metodologia de medição. Na verdade, é justo dizer que a visão dominante na ciência política é que a medição é uma tarefa necessária que deve ser rapidamente transcendida ou, se possível completamente ignorada, de modo que as energias dos pesquisadores se concentrem em uma tarefa vista como muito mais importante: o teste de hipóteses causais. A falha em reconhecer a importância da geração de dados e a metodologia da medição, e a propensão a tomar atalhos, tem custos graves. Em poucas palavras, ela leva a ganhos ilusórios em conhecimento, que mais cedo ou mais tarde são questionados. Assim, é hora de que os cientistas políticos desconfiem da tendência de reivindicações prematuras de conhecimento, tão difundida na disciplina, e coloquem mais ênfase na medição de conceitos-chave como uma base de conhecimento, isto é, como uma tarefa que afeta o possibilidade de fornecer análise descritiva e/ou causal sólida e, em última análise, de oferecer conselhos responsáveis. Palavras-chave: metodologia, índice de democracia   Abstract Measurement of the core concepts used in the study of politics has a great impact on our knowledge about politics. It affects the way we describe the world”” and hence the questions that seem important to study””and the causal propositions we consider to be valid. Even more importantly, it affects the kind of advice political scientists offer on the key political and public policy issues of the day. Yet it is remarkable how little attention is given to the generation of data and the methodology of measurement. Indeed, it is fair to say that the mainstream view in political science is that measurement is a necessary task that should be quickly transcended or, if at all possible altogether skipped, so that researchers ’ energies can focus on a task seen as much more important: the testing of causal hypotheses. The failure to acknowledge the importance of data generation and the methodology of measurement, and the propensity to take shortcuts, has severe costs. In a nutshell, it is associated with illusionary gains in knowledge, which sooner or later are questioned. Thus, it is time that political scientists become more suspicious of the tendency toward premature knowledge claims that is so pervasive in the discipline and put more emphasis on the measurement of key concepts as a foundation of knowledge, that is, as a task that affects the possibility of providing sound descriptive and/or causal analysis and, ultimately, of offering responsible advice. Keywords: methodology, democracy inde

The Contribution of Set Switching and Working Memory to Sentence Processing in Older Adults

This study evaluates the involvement of switching skills and working memory capacity in auditory sentence processing in older adults. The authors examined 241 healthy participants, aged 55 to 88 years, who completed four neuropsychological tasks and two sentence-processing tasks. In addition to age and the expected contribution of working memory, switching ability, as measured by the number of perseverative errors on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, emerged as a strong predictor of performance on both sentence-processing tasks. Individuals with both low working-memory spans and more perseverative errors achieved the lowest accuracy scores. These findings are consistent with compensatory accounts of successful performance in older age

Toward a new approach to job-related distress: A three-sample study of the Occupational Depression Inventory

The Occupational Depression Inventory (ODI) was recently developed to assess depressive symptoms that individuals specifically attribute to their work. One purpose of the ODI is to respond to limitations of current assessments of job-related distress, most notably, assessments relying on the burnout construct. In this study, we conducted a thorough examination of the psychometric and structural properties of the ODI using exploratory structural equation modelling bifactor analysis and Mokken scale analysis. The study involved three samples of employed individuals, recruited in France (N = 3454), Switzerland (N = 1971), and Australia (N = 1485). Results were consistent across the three samples. The ODI exhibited essential unidimensionality and excellent total‐score reliability―as indexed by McDonald\u27s omega, Cronbach\u27s alpha, Guttman\u27s lambda‐2, and the Molenaar‐Sijtsma statistic. We found evidence for measurement invariance across sexes, age groups, and samples. Mokken scale analysis revealed that the ODI\u27s scalability was strong. No monotonicity violation was detected. Invariant item ordering showed sufficient accuracy. In all three samples, suicidal ideation was the least commonly endorsed item―thus acting as a sentinel item―and fatigue/loss of energy was the most commonly endorsed item. The ODI exhibits excellent psychometric and structural properties, suggesting that occupational health specialists can effectively employ the instrument

Is the PHQ-9 a Unidimensional Measure of Depression? A 58,272-Participant Study

The PHQ-9 has become a measure of reference in depression research and clinical practice. However, the issue of the PHQ-9’s unidimensionality has not been fully elucidated, and the usability of the PHQ-9’s total score requires clarification. In this study, we examined the dimensionality, scalability, and monotonicity properties of the PHQ-9 as well as the scale’s total-score reliability. We did so based on exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) bifactor analysis and Mokken scale analysis (MSA). We relied on a total of 58,272 participants (63% female; Mage = 43, SDage = 13) from 29 samples involving seven different countries (e.g., Germany, the U.S.) and five different languages (e.g., German, English). We found no concerning deviations from measurement invariance for our ESEM bifactor model, neither across samples nor across sexes, age groups, and languages. The PHQ-9 met the requirements for essential unidimensionality in the pooled sample and across sex-, age-, and language-based subsamples. In each case, the general factor was strong (e.g., factor loadings ranged from 0.725 to 0.893 in the pooled sample) and Omega Hierarchical values exceeded 0.900. The correlations between the general factor and the observed total scores were large (≥ 0.952). Our MSA, including multilevel MSA, revealed that the PHQ-9’s scalability is satisfactory. No monotonicity violation was detected, suggesting that the scale’s total score accurately orders respondents on the latent Depression variable. Total-score reliability was good. This study provides robust evidence that the PHQ-9 can be used as a unidimensional measure of depressive symptoms by researchers and practitioners

Validation of the Occupational Depression Inventory in Brazil: A study of 1,612 civil servants

Objective: The Occupational Depression Inventory (ODI) assesses work-attributed depressive symptoms. The ODI has demonstrated robust psychometric and structural properties. To date, the instrument has been validated in English, French, and Spanish. This study examined the psychometric and structural properties of the ODI\u27s Brazilian-Portuguese version. Methods: The study involved 1612 civil servants employed in Brazil (MAGE = 44, SDAGE = 9; 60% female). The study was conducted online across all Brazilian states. Results: Exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) bifactor analysis indicated that the ODI meets the requirements for essential unidimensionality. The general factor accounted for 91% of the common variance extracted. We found measurement invariance to hold across sexes and age groups. Consistent with these findings, the ODI showed strong scalability (H = 0.67). The instrument\u27s total score accurately ranked respondents on the latent dimension underlying the measure. Furthermore, the ODI exhibited excellent total-score reliability (e.g., McDonald\u27s ω = 0.93). Occupational depression correlated negatively with work engagement and each of its components (vigor, dedication, and absorption), speaking to the ODI\u27s criterion validity. Finally, the ODI helped clarify the issue of burnout-depression overlap. Relying on ESEM confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), we found burnout\u27s components to correlate more strongly with occupational depression than with each other. Using a higher-order ESEM-within-CFA framework, we found a correlation of 0.95 between burnout and occupational depression. Conclusion: The ODI displays robust psychometric and structural properties within the Brazilian context. The ODI constitutes a valuable resource for occupational health specialists and may help advance research on job-related distress

Is burnout a depressive condition? A 14-sample meta-analytic and bifactor analytic study

There is no consensus on whether burnout constitutes a depressive condition or an original entity requiring specific medical and legal recognition. In this study, we examined burnout–depression overlap using 14 samples of individuals from various countries and occupational domains (N = 12,417). Meta-analytically pooled disattenuated correlations indicated (a) that exhaustion—burnout’s core—is more closely associated with depressive symptoms than with the other putative dimensions of burnout (detachment and efficacy) and (b) that the exhaustion–depression association is problematically strong from a discriminant validity standpoint (r = .80). The overlap of burnout’s core dimension with depression was further illuminated in 14 exploratory structural equation modeling bifactor analyses. Given their consistency across countries, languages, occupations, measures, and methods, our results offer a solid base of evidence in support of the view that burnout problematically overlaps with depression. We conclude by outlining avenues of research that depart from the use of the burnout construct

Clinical Methods Developing a personal health record self-efficacy tool

Abstract The purpose of this preliminary work was to develop a new short tool to assess personal health records (PHRs) self-efficacy. Prior work had found 4 distinct skills related to creating, updating, tracking symptoms, and sharing information with health care providers using PHR. Although PHRs have great promise, their uptake has been rather limited, especially in economically limited populations. A convenience sample of community-living persons with HIV/AIDS (N = 100) was asked to complete the new tool along with other self-efficacy measures. Preliminary work indicated more confidence about paper-based PHRs compared with computer-based PHRs. The paper-based subscale was significantly correlated to chronic illness and HIV treatment self-efficacy scales as expected, but there were no relationships for the computer-based subscale. This simple screening tool could identify interested clients and their preference either for a paper-based or computer-based PHR. Further research is needed with larger sample sizes and different chronically ill populations to further explore the psychometrics of the instrument