Mix-keying or desirability-matching in the construction of forced-choice measures? an empirical investigation and practical recommendations

Forced-choice (FC) measures are becoming increasingly popular as an alternative to single-statement (SS) measures. However, to ensure the practical usefulness of an FC measure, it is crucial to address the tension between psychometric properties and faking resistance by balancing mixed keying and social desirability matching. It is currently unknown from an empirical perspective whether the two design criteria can be reconciled, and how they impact respondent reactions. By conducting a two-wave experimental design, we constructed four FC measures with varying degrees of mixed-keying and social desirability matching from the same statement pool and investigated their differences in terms of psychometric properties, faking resistance, and respondent reactions. Results showed that all FC measures demonstrated comparable reliability and induced similar respondent reactions. FC measures with stricter social desirability matching were more faking resistant, while FC measures with more mixed keyed blocks had higher convergent validity with SS measures and displayed similar discriminant and criterion-related validity profiles as the SS benchmark. More importantly, we found that it is possible to strike a balance between social desirability matching and mixed keying, such that FC measures can have adequate psychometric properties and faking resistance. A 7-step recommendation and a tutorial based on the autoFC R package were provided to help readers construct their own FC measures

Modulation of the Differentiation of Dental Pulp Stem Cells by Different Concentrations of β-Glycerophosphate

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sj-docx-1-orm-10.1177_10944281241229784 - Supplemental material for Mixed-Keying or Desirability-Matching in the Construction of Forced-Choice Measures? An Empirical Investigation and Practical Recommendations

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-orm-10.1177_10944281241229784 for Mixed-Keying or Desirability-Matching in the Construction of Forced-Choice Measures? An Empirical Investigation and Practical Recommendations by Mengtong Li, Bo Zhang, Lingyue Li, Tianjun Sun and Anna Brown in Organizational Research Methods</p

Engineering Pheromone-Mediated Quorum Sensing with Enhanced Response Output Increases Fucosyllactose Production in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Engineering dynamic control of gene expression is desirable because many engineered functions interfere with endogenous cellular processes that have evolved to facilitate growth and survival. Minimizing conflict between growth and production phases can therefore improve product titers in microbial cell factories. We developed an autoinduced gene expression system by rewiring the Saccharomyces cerevisiae pheromone response pathway. To ameliorate growth reduction due to the early onset response at low population densities, α-pheromone of Kluyveromyces lactis (Kα) instead of S. cerevisiae (Sα) was expressed in mating type “a” yeast. Kα-induced expression of pathway genes was further enhanced by the transcriptional activator Gal4p expressed under the control of the pheromone-responsive FUS1 promoter (Pfus1). As a demonstration, the engineered circuit combined with the deletion of the endogenous galactose metabolic pathway genes was applied to the production of human milk oligosaccharides, 2′-fucosyllactose (2′-FL) and 3-fucosllactose (3-FL). The engineered strains produced 3.37 g/L 2′-FL and 2.36 g/L 3-FL on glucose with a volumetric productivity of 0.14 and 0.03 g/L·h–1 in batch flask cultivation, respectively. These represented 147 and 153% increases over the control strains on galactose wherein the respective pathway genes are expressed under GAL promoters only. Further fed-batch fermentation achieved titers of 32.05 and 20.91 g/L for 2′ and 3-FL, respectively. The genetic program developed here thus represents a promising option for implementing dynamic regulation in yeast and could be used for the production of biochemicals that may place a heavy metabolic burden on cell growth

Healthier diet associated with reduced risk of excessive gestational weight gain: A Chinese prospective cohort study

Abstract Limited studies have examined the associations between diet quality and gestational weight gain (GWG) among Chinese pregnant women, adopting Chinese GWG guidelines. We prospectively investigate the associations of diet quality, using the Chinese Healthy Diet Index for Pregnancy (CHDI‐P), which assessed diet quality from ‘Diversity’, ‘Adequacy’ and ‘Limitation’ dimensions with overall 100 points, with GWG among participants enroled in Southwest China. Food consumption was collected by 24 h dietary recalls for three consecutive days and CHDI‐P scores were divided into tertiles. GWG was calculated according to the weight measured before delivery and classified into adequate weight gain (AWG), insufficient weight gain (IWG) and excessive weight gain(EWG) following Chinese GWG guidelines. Multinomial regression analyses and stratified analyses by pre‐pregnancy body mass index were performed to estimate the association between CHDI‐P and GWG. A total of 1416 participants were recruited in early pregnancy, and 971 and 997 participants were respectively followed up in middle and late pregnancy. The mean CHDI‐P score was 56.44 ± 6.74, 57.07 ± 7.44 and 57.38 ± 7.94 points in early, middle and late pregnancy, respectively. Women in the lowest CHDI‐P scores group had an increased risk of EWG in middle (OR = 1.53, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.08–2.17) and late pregnancy (OR = 1.71, 95% CI = 1.21–2.41) than women in the highest group, while overweight/obese women had a greater risk of EWG in late pregnancy (OR = 4.25, 95% CI = 1.30–13.90). No association was found between the CHDI‐P scores and IWG. Poor diet quality in middle and late pregnancy was associated with a higher risk of EWG