0000000000319828

AUTHOR

Carolyn Finck

Psychometric evaluations of the Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R), based on nine samples

The aim of this study was to examine psychometric properties of the Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R).The LOT-R was administered in five clinical samples, three samples of the adult general population, and one sample of adolescents. Seven of the studies were performed in Germany and two in Colombia. All of the sample sizes were above 300.Cronbach's alpha coefficients were between .57 and .75 for the eight adult samples, the correlations between the scales optimism and pessimism ranged from -.05 to -.37, and the coefficients of temporal stability (test-retest correlations) of the scales ranged from .43 to .69. There were no systematic age and gender effects observed in the nine studies. …

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Cross-cultural measurement invariance of the General Health Questionnaire-12 in a German and a Colombian population sample

While the General Health Questionnaire, 12-item version (GHQ-12) has been widely used in cross-cultural comparisons, rigorous tests of the measurement equivalence of different language versions are still lacking. Thus, our study aims at investigating configural, metric and scalar invariance across the German and the Spanish version of the GHQ-12 in two population samples. The GHQ-12 was applied in two large-scale population-based samples in Germany (N = 1,977) and Colombia (N = 1,500). To investigate measurement equivalence, confirmatory factor analyses were conducted in both samples. In the German sample mean GHQ-12 total scores were higher than in the Colombian sample. A one-factor model …

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Health-related quality of life in Colombia: reference values of the EORTC QLQ-C30

There are normative data of the quality of life (QoL) questionnaire EORTC QLQ-C30 (the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire) for several European countries and Korea, but not for Latin America. The aim of this study was to provide these normative values for the general population in Colombia and to assess differences in terms of age and sex. For that reason, a sample of 1500 representatively selected individuals of the Colombian population completed the EORTC QLQ-C30 form. Results showed that mean scores of the Colombian population are similar to those obtained in European countries; whereas the mean values from a Korean study were lower (…

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Psychometric Properties of the Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory (MFI-20), Derived From Seven Samples

Abstract Context Fatigue is a frequent symptom in patients suffering from chronic diseases. The Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory (MFI-20) is often used to measure fatigue. The aim of this article was to test the scale structure of the questionnaire. Methods The MFI-20 data were obtained from seven samples, including general population samples and samples of patients with different diseases (N between 122 and 1993). Five confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) models were tested for each sample. Results The scale structure postulated by the original test authors could not be confirmed by the CFAs. The inclusion of a method factor which considers the positive versus the negative orientation of t…

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Is the General Self-Efficacy Scale a Reliable Measure to be used in Cross-Cultural Studies? Results from Brazil, Germany and Colombia.

AbstractThis study evaluated cross-cultural measurement invariance for the General Self-efficacy Scale (GSES) in a large Brazilian (N = 2.394) and representative German (N = 2.046) and Colombian (N = 1.500) samples. Initially, multiple-indicators multiple-causes (MIMIC) analyses showed that sex and age were biasing items responses on the total sample (2 and 10 items, respectively). After controlling for these two covariates, a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) was employed. Configural invariance was attested. However, metric invariance was not supported for five items, in a total of 10, and scalar invariance was not supported for all items. We also evaluated the differences be…

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