Journal of personality assessment
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The psychometric distinctiveness of self-reported anxiety and depression in patients with chronic pain was investigated. The item-level responses of 220 patients with heterogeneous pain conditions from the Beck Depression Inventory and State--Trait Anxiety Inventory State--Anxiety scale were submitted to common factor analysis. ⋯ Correlations of first-order factor scores with other psychometric measures suggested only minor distinctiveness. The findings indicated that it is possible to distinguish anxiety and depression psychometrically in patients with chronic pain but suggested that negative affect may be the primary underlying construct of the affective experience of these patients.
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Increasingly, investigations evaluating the effectiveness of the MMPI-2 in the assessment of malingering employ methodologies whereby research participants are asked to feigned specific disorders rather than just to "fake bad." Yet there is little research addressing the issue of whether different validity scales and indicators work differently in the detection of different feigned disorders. In this study the comparative effectiveness of a number of validity scales and indicators on the MMPI-2 to assess feigned depression and feigned schizophrenia were evaluated. Overall, the validity scales and indicators were better at detecting feigned schizophrenia than they were in detecting feigned depression, attributable, most likely, to closer familiarity with depressive experiences. The validity scales F, Fb, and F(p) best distinguish patients with schizophrenia from participants feigning schizophrenia, and F and Fb best distinguish patients with depression from participants feigning depression.
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A sample of 408 patients with substance use disorders was equally divided into derivation and cross-validation samples. All patients had taken the MMPI-2. ⋯ Confirmatory factor analyses in cross-validation demonstrated a good fit for both models and for their combination in a 5-factor measurement model. Latent variable correlations in the 5-factor model helped explain the high correlation and low discriminant validity of ANX and DEP.
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Conceptual problems with existing measures of Erikson's ego-integrity construct were identified. It was hypothesized that a core component of ego-integrity involves how individuals evaluate and reflect on past experiences. Accepting the past was formally defined and operationalized and was conceptualized as one source of self-worth central to many formulations of depression. ⋯ Failing to accept the past was related to depressive symptoms even after accounting for effects due to age, sex, and physical symptoms. However, accepting the past was moderated by trait negative affectivity. Accepting the past predicted depressive symptoms only in individuals reporting high negative affectivity.
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Comparative Study
Measuring the impostor phenomenon: a comparison of Clance's IP Scale and Harvey's I-P Scale.
Many of the discrepancies reported to date in empirical investigations of the impostor phenomenon (IP) may be due in part to (a) the use of different methods for identifying individuals suffering from this syndrome (impostors), (b) the common use of a median split procedure to classify subjects and (c) the fact that subjects in many studies were drawn from impostor-prone samples. In this study, we compared the scores of independently identified impostors and nonimpostors on two instruments designed to measure the IP: Harvey's I-P Scale and Clance's IP Scale. The results suggest that Clance's scale may be the more sensitive and reliable instrument. Cutoff score suggestions for both instruments are offered.