A Validity and Reliability Study of the Multidimensional Trust in Health-Care Systems Scale in a Turkish Patient Population

The importance of trust within health care is widely acknowledged. Measuring patients’ trust in health care systems may contribute to plans for the financing, delivery, and outcomes of health services. Although many scales are available to measure patient trust, less attention has been paid to the multidimensional nature of trust in health care systems. The purpose of this methodological study was to adapt the Multidimensional Trust in Health-Care Systems Scale into Turkish and to evaluate its psychometric properties for a Turkish patient population. The scale was adapted into Turkish through a translation and back-translation process. The content validity of the scale was assessed using expert approval. The psychometric properties of the scale were investigated by collecting data from 232 hospitalised patients in Ankara during theperiod of 1 January–30 December 2010. An exploratory factor analysis identified that the eigenvalues for the three factors of the scale were 7.30, 2.61, and 1.21; these three factors explained 65 % of the variance. A confirmatory factor analysis indicated a sufficient model fit for the construct validity of the scale. Cronbach’s α for the total scale was 0.87, as well as 0.91, 0.82, and 0.61 for the three subscales; the Spearman-Brown split half reliability coefficient was 0.67. Despite the low internal consistency of the subscale 3, evidence from this study supports the validity and reliability of the Multidimensional Trust in Health-Care Systems Scale. This instrument can be used to measure multiple aspects of trust in the health care system; however, as trust is a contextual phenomenon, further work is needed to test the psychometric properties of this scale both in Turkish and different cultures.     

New Well-being Measures: Short Scales to Assess Flourishing and Positive and Negative Feelings

Measures of well-being were created to assess psychological flourishing and feelings—positive feelings, negative feelings, and the difference between the two. The scales were evaluated in a sample of 689 college students from six locations. The Flourishing Scale is a brief 8-item summary measure of the respondent’s self-perceived success in important areas such as relationships, self-esteem, purpose, and optimism. The scale provides a single psychological well-being score. The measure has good psychometric properties, and is strongly associated with other psychological well-being scales. The Scale of Positive and Negative Experience produces a score for positive feelings (6 items), a score for negative feelings (6 items), and the two can be combined to create a balance score. This 12-item brief scale has a number of desirable features compared to earlier measures of positive and negative emotions. In particular, the scale assesses with a few items a broad range of negative and positive experiences and feelings, not just those of a certain type, and is based on the amount of time the feelings were experienced during the past 4 weeks. The scale converges well with measures of emotions and affective well-being.     

Psychometric Evaluation of the Malay Satisfaction With Life Scale

The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) is one of the most widely used scales for the measurement of subjective well-being across the globe, but no satisfactory version exists for use among Malay-speaking populations. The present study reports on the translation of a new Malay SWLS and examines its psychometric properties in a community sample of 816 Malay and 738 Chinese participants from Malaysia. Results showed that the Malay SWLS had good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.83). Confirmatory factor analysis showed support for a unidimensional factor structure which remained invariant across sex and ethnic group. These results suggest that the Malay SWLS is a valid and reliable measure of life satisfaction for Malay-speaking samples, and extends the list of available scales for measuring subjective well-being among such groups.     

Measures of Social Isolation

Social isolation is a deprivation of social connectedness. It is a crucial aspect that continues to be named by people as a core impediment for achieving well-being and as a relevant factor for understanding poverty. However it is not routinely included in surveys that provide data on multidimensional poverty measurement. Although the challenge of measuring social connectedness is daunting, this paper argues that existing research in several fields provides solid ground for the construction of basic internationally comparable indicators that measure specific aspects of social isolation. In particular, this paper synthesises the relevant literature on the measurement of social isolation and related phenomena, and on the basis of this synthetic review, proposes a module of indicators to measure social connectedness that could be feasibly incorporated into an internationally comparable multi-topic household survey.     

Measuring Homonegativity: Psychometric Analysis of Herek’s Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men Scale (ATLG) in Colombia,South America

The empirical study of negative attitudes toward gay and lesbian people (homonegativity) is a way to understand the reason for its prevalence. The aim of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of a Spanish version of the Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men Scale (ATLG). A total of 359 undergraduate students were recruited from two different cities in Colombia, South America. Participants’ attitudes toward gays and lesbian people were assessed using the ATLG Scale and the Homophobia Scale; anxiety was measured using a short version of the Zung Self-Rating Anxiety Scale. Internal consistency analyses have shown that the ATLG Scale is a reliable measure of homonegativity in a Colombian sample. In addition, principal components analyses, as well as convergent and divergent validity analyses have confirmed that the ATLG Scale is a valid and reliable measure of homonegativity in the Colombian context and support its use as a research instrument.     

The construction and validation of the homopositivity scale: an instrument measuring endorsement of positive stereotypes about gay men

Social scientists appear to focus on negative beliefs about, and attitudes toward, gay men and lesbian women. This emphasis, though understandable in view of the widespread oppression of gay and lesbian individuals, is somewhat myopic because it ignores what might be referred to as the positive dimension of stereotypes. Although such a concept may appear oxymoronic, it is widely recognized that individuals may endorse a mixture of positive and negative stereotypes toward stigmatized groups such as African Americans and women. The purpose of the current series of studies (Study 1, N = 212; Study 2, N = 105) was to devise an instrument measuring endorsement of positive stereotypes about gay men (Homopositivity Scale; HPS). Two versions of the HPS (of varying length) were evaluated, with scale scores on both appearing to be internally consistent and factorially distinct from scales measuring negative stereotypes and prejudices about gay men. These studies also suggest that females are more likely than males to endorse positive stereotypes about gay men, and that such endorsement is negatively associated with need for uniqueness and need for cognition, and positively associated with media contact and benevolent sexism. The limitations of the two studies are outlined and the importance of assessing positive stereotypes about gay men in conjunction with oft-examined homonegativity is discussed.     

Validating the Portuguese Version of the Satisfaction With Life Scale in an Elderly Sample

Life satisfaction is referred to a cognitive, judgmental process (Diener et al. in J Pers Assess 49:71–75, 1985), in which person’s quality of life is globally assessed according to his/her chosen criteria (Shin and Johnson in Soc Indic res 5:475–492, 1978). Thus, life satisfaction is a conscious cognitive judgment, based on the comparison of one’s life with a self-imposed standard or set of standards, which lead to a global assessment of life (Pavot and Diener in Psychol Assess 5:164–172, 1993). Among the many scales developed to measure life satisfaction, the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS, Diener et al. in J Pers Assess 49:71–75, 1985) is one of the global life satisfaction scales more often used in the research arena. It is composed of five items assessing global life satisfaction, using a Likert type response format. The aim of this paper is to validate the Portuguese version of the SWLS via confirmatory factor analysis, with a sample of 1,003 elderly from Angola. Reliability, factorial and criterial validity estimates are presented. Overall, the results shown that the scale had an adequate one-factor confirmatory solution, satisfying reliability indices, and adequate criterion-related validity when assessed in a sample of Angolan elderly. The discussion relates the results with existing literature and posits the contributions of the paper: firstly, it offers the researchers on life satisfaction in Portuguese-speaking contexts a brief, self-rated measure of satisfaction with life that has sound psychometric properties, validity, and reliability; secondly, it is the first confirmatory validation of the scale in Portuguese.     

Construction and Validation of the Moral Inclusion/Exclusion of Other Groups (MIEG) Scale

Moral exclusion is defined as viewing others as lying beyond the boundary within which moral values and rules of justice apply. In contrast, the process of moral inclusion involves the extension of social justice to several social groups. Thus, both moral inclusion and exclusion are a pivotal dimension in the study of social inequalities. Although the concept of moral inclusion/exclusion has a history of more than 20 years, research still lacks accurate instruments for measuring it. In this article, a first version of a scale that measures moral inclusion/exclusion was constructed and validated. The good reliability and correlation indexes found across the samples suggest that MIEG is a good measure for tapping into moral exclusion/inclusion symptoms.     

A Systematic Review of the Psychometric Properties of Composite LGBT Prejudice and Discrimination Scales

ABSTRACT

Prejudice and discrimination against LGBT individuals is widespread and has been shown to have negative consequences for sexual and gender minority persons’ physical and psychological wellbeing. A recent and problematic trend in the literature is to compositely measure prejudice toward and discrimination against LGBT persons. As such, a review of the psychometric properties of scales assessing, in a combinatory fashion, negative attitudes and/or behaviors toward LGBT persons is warranted. In the current study, 32 scales were identified, and their psychometric properties were evaluated. Most of the scales reviewed did not provide sufficient information regarding item development and refinement, scale dimensionality, scale score reliability, or validity. Properties of the reviewed scales are summarized, and recommendations for better measurement practice are articulated.     

Modeling the psychological determinants of life quality

A number of subjective well-being scales were compared and evaluated. The Satisfaction With Life Scale emerged as a good measure of general life satisfaction and the Affective Intensity Measure appeared to adequately assess the characteristic level of emotional intensity. Most other scales seemed to reflect both life satisfaction and duration of positive versus negative affect. Of the single item measures, those created by Fordyce were the strongest, whereas for the multi-item scales, several performed at adequate levels. The widely used Bradburn scales showed several undesirable psychometric properties and alternative scales are suggested.     

Translation and Validation of the Malay Subjective Happiness Scale

The Subjective Happiness Scale (Lyubomirsky and Lepper, Social Indicators Research, 46, 137–155, 1999) is a brief measure for assessing subjective happiness. The reliability and validity of the Malay version of the Subjective Happiness Scale was investigated in a community sample of 290 Chinese and 227 Malays in Malaysia. Results showed that the Malay Subjective Happiness Scale has excellent internal consistency, a unitary structure, and stability over a 30-day period and across ethnic groups. Moreover, the Malay version of the scale exhibited good convergent validity with single-item happiness scales. The availability of the Malay Subjective Happiness Scale is expected to facilitate the examination of happiness in Malay-speaking populations.     

The MOS Alienation Scale: An alternative to Srole's Anomia Scale

A growing number of sociologists believe that Srole's Anomia Scale, whether modified or not, is too inclusive to measure anomie in any meaningful way when using survey research techniques among subcultures. Evidence from the National Opinion Research Center's annual General Social Survey, which is a cross-sectional sample of adults in the United States, tends to give credence to this criticism — that is, although Srole's Anomia Scale displays a modest degree of internal reliability, it nevertheless lacks external validity in surveys on national subpopulations. This study illustrates the relative superiority of the Margins of Society (MOS) Alienation Scale, which comprises operations from theories on anomie and social isolation. A subculture of homeless Alaska Natives were personally interviewed to document the attributes of this new alienation scale and the results from this exploratory study suggest that further analysis should prove useful for studying alienation within other ethnic groups.     

Social desirability in measures of subjective well-being: Age comparisons

The present investigation evaluated the relationship between measures of psychological well-being and social desirability in three age groups: 21–40, 41–60, and 61–82 year-old samples. Data on 330 people, consisting of community and clinical groups, yielded high correlations between three measures of well-being (the MUNSH, the LSI-Z, and the PGC) and the Edwards Social Desirability Scale for all age groups, but only moderate ones between well-being scales and the Marlow-Crown Social Desirability Scale. Partial correlations between well-being measures and an external criterion of happiness, controlling for social desirability, failed to improve on the 0-order criterion/well-being relationship. Controlling for social desirability, therefore, does not enhance the construct validity of well-being scales in adult populations at any age. These results, combined with those on the factor structure of scale totals and on the discriminant validity of the well-being measures, suggest that the high 0-order correlations between measures of well-being and the Edwards scale are more readily attributed to content similarity between the Edwards scale and measures of well-being than to a social desirability response bias in well-being measures.     

Development of Science Anxiety Scale for Primary School Students

The principal aim of the study is to develop a new scale Science Anxiety Scale and to examine its the psychometric properties and construct validity of the Science Anxiety Scale in a sample of 797 primary school students. Exploratory factor analysis was applied and found to have a two-dimensional structure. Confirmatory factor analyses provide evidence for a solid two-dimension structure reflecting the theorized construct: personal and environmental. Also, for convergent validity, item reliability, construct reliability and average variance values were calculated and it was found that item reliability and construct reliability values generally provided the required criteria. The average variance extracted value had a value below the criteria value for both sub-dimensions. Discriminant validity was above the criteria value in all dimensions. The reliability of the Science Anxiety Scale scales appeared to be satisfactory, with good internal consistency. The Science Anxiety Scale was found to be reliable and valid for the Turkish primary student context with a few exceptions.     

Reliability and Validity of the Personal Social Capital Scale 16 and Personal Social Capital Scale 8: Two Short Instruments for Survey Studies

Rapid developments in social capital and health research require short instruments for large-scale survey studies. The Personal Social Capital Scale (PSCS) is a theory-based and empirically tested instrument with reliability and validity established in the US and China, but it is too long for large-scale survey research. In this study, we described two short versions of the instrument: the PSCS-16 and PSCS-8. The two short scales were evaluated with survey data collected among an adult sample (N = 259) in China. The sample consisted of rural-to-urban migrants and non-migrant rural and urban residents. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were .90 for the PSCS-18 and .83 for the PSCS-8. Both short instruments satisfactorily fit a two-factor model comprising the bonding capital and bridging capital subscales. The two short scales were highly correlated with the original PSCS (r = .95 for the PSCS-18 and .93 for the PSCS-8 respectively, p < .001 for both); significantly distinguished the migrant subsample from the two non-migrant subsamples; and significantly predicted social capital investment and stress level. In conclusion, the two short instruments PSCS-16 and PSCS-8 were reliable and valid, and can be used in large-scale survey studies to assess personally owned social capital. Further research is needed to replicate their reliability and validity in different cultural settings and to establish the test–retest reliability.     

The psychometric properties of the SSL12-I,a short scale for measuring social support in the elderly

In this paper the psychometric properties of the SSL12-I, a short measure to assess the level of social support, are presented. The SSL12-I consists of 12 items, divided into three subscales with four items each: everyday support, social support in problem situations, and esteem support. The results show that a three-factor solution, as initially found in two pilot studies, is found again in an extensive community based elderly sample. The conclusion is that the psychometric properties of the SSL12-I are satisfactory, and that this relatively short instrument is especially useful when a rough indication of the amount of received social support is required.     

Older Women Living in a Continuing Care Retirement Community: Marital Status and Friendship Formation

SUMMARY

Ethnographic observations and interviews with twenty female residents of a new Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) revealed the patterns of friendship development experienced by older women. Qualitative analyses identified various phases of friendship development and aspects of the social context that facilitated friendship formation in its earliest stages. Marital status was a major factor in the selection of friends within this setting. Friendship styles and strategies for developing friendships varied considerably. Although most women successfully formed new friendships within this setting, certain subgroups seemed at risk for social isolation.     

Validation of the Coping With Discrimination Scale in Sexual Minorities

The Coping With Discrimination Scale (CDS) shows promise as a self-report measure of strategies for coping with racial discrimination. To assess the psychometric properties of the measure for use with sexual minorities (i.e., gay, lesbian, bisexual, or GLB persons), a nonprobability sample of 371 GLB adults completed the instrument along with several standardized, self-report measures. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the five-factor structure of the original scale with the exclusion of five items. Adequate internal consistency reliability was found. Internalization, drug and alcohol use, and detachment subscales were correlated positively with measures of psychological distress and negatively with a measure of life satisfaction, providing evidence of construct validity. The education/advocacy and resistance subscales were largely unrelated to concurrently administered validation measures, consistent with prior findings. Coping strategy use varied as a function of primary sources of social support. The CDS appears to be a psychometrically sound measure of several discrimination coping strategies for use with sexual minorities.     

Short happiness and affect research protocol (sharp)

Issues in the measurement of subjective well-being (SWB) include the relative balance between scale brevity and measurement accuracy. Because accuracy is expected to vary negatively with the length of a scale, the brevity/accuracy trade-off has pragmatic implications for survey research. This article begins by examining minimal psychometric criteria to evaluate short measures of SWB. These criteria include content validity (i.e., four basic categories are cited), criterion validity, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability. Several measures frequently used in large-scale surveys are shown to fail against one or more of these criteria. Consequently, a new brief measure was developed and shown to satisfy all the criteria. It is termed the Short Happiness and Affect Research Protocol (SHARP). This measure contains 12-items derived from the Memorial University of Newfoundland Scale of Happiness (MUNSH), with the content balanced over positive and negative, and short-term (affective) and long-term (dispositional) components. The internal consistency, temporal stability, and criterion validity coefficients for the SHARP are comparable to those of the MUNSH, which is among the most accurate measures of self-reported SWB.     

Psychometric Evaluation of the Serbian Version of the Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale

The main purpose of this study was to evaluate psychometric properties of the Serbian version of the Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (MSLSS). The research was carried out on a sample of 408 high school students (250 females, 158 males), with the mean age 16.6. The Serbian version of the MSLSS has demonstrated good psychometric properties. The internal consistency coefficients (Cronbach’s α) for the MSLSS domain and total scores were adequate. Support for the validity of the MSLSS was provided by the pattern of correlations with various positive and negative indicators of well-being. However, it has been suggested that shortening the scale from 40 items to 25 items could provide more accurate measure of adolescents’ life satisfaction for the future research.